


Entrances and Exits

by Drusilla_951



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, Canonical Case Fic, Cemetery, Episode Related, Episode: s07e03 Zenana, Gen, Introspection, Italian Police, Ludo Talenti (Endeavour) Backstory (of sorts!), Morse gives his statement, Mostly Canon Compatible, Murder, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 07, Rescue, Self-Sacrifice, Sequel, Sequel to Zenana (Endeavour), Spoilers, Venezia | Venice, Violetta Talenti (Endeavour) Backstory (of sorts!)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:54:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25753921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drusilla_951/pseuds/Drusilla_951
Summary: SPOILERS ALERT, if you haven’t watched S7 yet. (You've been warned.)What happened after the curtain literally dropped on Morse and Thursday at the end ofZenana? Will their relationship recover from this last blow? What will be the consequences of Morse’s rash actions?Find out in this sequel that explores what came after the last scenes of Series 7.
Relationships: Endeavour Morse & Fred Thursday, Endeavour Morse & Ludo Talenti, Endeavour Morse/Violetta Talenti
Comments: 49
Kudos: 48





	1. The Dead

**Author's Note:**

> I’m hugely indebted to my awesome Beta [AstridContraMundum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/pseuds/AstridContraMundum). Without her help and support, you wouldn’t be reading this fic.  
>   
> Not Britpicked or Italianpicked; every remaining error is mine, even if some Italian errors and typos were edited by [Extremely Romantic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/extremely_romantic/pseuds/extremely_romantic) after I first posted the story. 😉  
>   
> All the standard disclaimers apply: _Endeavour_ doesn’t belong to me, and I’m just borrowing the characters for a while. Some dialogues are Russell Lewis’ and Julian Mitchell’s ( _Masonic Mysteries_ ).  
>   
> If you appreciate this story, please let me know! Comments and criticisms are always welcome as writing has been very difficult lately. Lack of spare time and some soul-searching about my writing have gotten in the way, but I’ll do my best to go on with my Joan Morse AU series when I get this one out of my system.  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I rewrote the ending of _Zenana_ , I used the topography of the actual place, so it’s somehow different from what we saw in the episode.

_All the world's a stage,_  
_And all the men and women merely players:_  
_They have their exits and their entrances;_  
_And one man in his time plays many parts._  
Shakespeare, _As You Like It_ (Act II, Scene 7)

  
  


The place of meeting given by Violetta was at the back of the graveyard, a short stroll away from the older hemicycle, away from the St. Michael Church and the adjoining, imbricated cloisters. Situated on the far end of the island, this enclosure disclosed less ornate tombs: in that ‘sector,’ common people shared their last sleep buried in mostly unadorned soil, their tombs’ slates bare of any extravagant covering, their last places of rest devoid of the funerary chapels claimed by much richer or aristocratic families. Some feet away, one of those, all rotund roof and ochre walls, stood squarely in the corner of the nearby _recinto_ , the wall delimitating another district of the huge cemetery.

Nestled in the high brick wall, the edifice turned its back almost disdainfully on the less prestigious rows of tombs. It figured prominently on Morse’s horizon as he strode with long, hasty steps towards _Campo_ ‘N.’ 

He took his position on the edge of the alley, under one of the huge cypress trees, at the approximate marking designated on the map slipped under the door of his hotel room. He was surveying methodically his surroundings, searching for any hint of movement, when he suddenly flinched.

 _Could it be—?_ He took a step closer to the headstone. 

But his eyes had not deceived him: it sported ‘ _Ludovicus Talenti MDCCCLX MCMXXVII_ ’ in letters fast fading under the attack of the saline air.

Morse barely had the time to recover from his surprise when he heard the crunch of a familiar footstep on the gravel behind him. His startled turn was as belligerent as it was wary, even if he knew that he had already lost his advantage.

These psychological games held no novelty for him: Gull came to mind, of course, but he had not been the first of those who had tried to take advantage of him along the years. Cyril Morse had been the first of a long series. 

But this man, Ludo—this friendly acquaintance that Morse had convinced himself he really knew from his College years; this man he so wanted to befriend because they had opera and art as common ground, such a welcome change from the conversations at the nick—had made a fool of him from the very start.

‘ _Ludo, like the game?_ ’ and the laughing reply, ‘ _It's short for Ludovico. But, yes, exactly that_ ’ resounded with additional, brutal clarity in his mind, making him cringe. With the benefice of hindsight, it was acutely mocking.

And, as in any other of his mind games, Ludo— _Ludovicus_ —Talenti, the man who seemed to have no name, ostensibly had the upper hand.

Morse’s unconscious lingering stare on the faded engraved letters didn’t go unnoticed. A contented smile flashed on Ludo’s lips, and it took all of Morse’s will to master his face in an impassive mask.

‘Well, well. What a pleasant surprise,’ Ludo smirked, then his sneer widened with jolliness as if he were still welcoming his copper friend with open arms in his Oxford residence. ‘How was it to be Morse? Was she to betray me with a kiss?’

Morse didn’t answer, his face acquiring a frozen look that didn’t stop Talenti’s outpouring of false joviality. Without waiting for the answers to his rhetorical questions, he began walking, leaving the foliage of the cypresses behind, and turned right, following the path. On his left, the high wall of the _recinto_ shrouded his silhouette in additional shadows. _Recinto V_ , if Morse’s memory served him well.

Warily, Morse followed him, his right hand still clutching the gun buried deep in the pocket of his coat.

When they were about to pass the three-arched gate leading into the neighbouring graveyard, Talenti suddenly checked his progress, turning sideways to look at Morse. ‘Twenty-four hours, wasn’t that your squalid little bargain?’ His voice exuded nonchalant irony, malice peering through. ‘Her price for selling me out.’

Suddenly, Morse found his voice. ‘What have you done to her?’

‘Oh, please. Such drama.’ Talenti raised his left hand languidly, designating vaguely the opening, then engulfed it deftly into his coat pocket. ‘Fear not, she’ll be along. We wouldn’t want her to miss the end.’

‘This _is_ the end. I'm here to take you in.’

The assertion sounded steadier than he truly felt, Morse briefly noted with inner satisfaction.

 _If only he had not gone on a desperate, private endeavour, throwing himself to the wolves_. He had taken precautions enough, he felt, but still he had ignored the question of whether or not the _Polizia_ would back him up when it was truly over. So it was with commendable cheek that he answered Talenti’s scathing ‘Aren't you forgetting something? We are beyond your jurisdiction,’ with a snappy ‘you can tell that to the Italian police while I'm organising your extradition.’

Nonetheless, he had been putting the cart before the horse; Morse knew it well. Extradition meant an official request from the Embassy, followed by an order to an Italian magistrate, then an Italian arrest warrant. Still, his only hope of catching the Talentis was Violetta’s routine of her New Year’s Eve Opera evening at La Fenice, and time had been of the essence.

Ludo’s ebullient laugh burst forth, disrupting Morse’s thoughts, and grating on his nerves. Nerves further stretched by Talenti denying any criminal designs, claiming a ‘spotless conscience,’ and shoving the blame onto his ‘glamorous assistant.’

Another lazy shrug, and then he added theatrically, ‘We all have our entrances and our exits, Morse. Our parts to play.’

He even had the gall to misquote Shakespeare, Morse sneered internally.

‘—Even you,’ went on Ludo, with barely hidden contempt.

The rigid mask affixed on Morse’s face was beginning to burn from the inside, as if acid were corroding his features under this frail protection, shrivelling his flesh into a parody of face. He could not help recoiling, then ask what was his part, even as he knew he was playing into Ludo’s hands.

Eyelids lowered over his scorn, Ludo said, ‘You were my useful idiot. My pet policeman.’

‘Right, enough, enough!’ 

Vehemence tore Morse’s mask away and he almost felt it dropping at his feet, baring his fury for Talenti to see. _Control, he had to keep control_.

Without seeming to acknowledge the copper’s reaction, Talenti advanced a little, checking his progress when he was exactly in front of the archway. He looked over his shoulder. ‘Do you want to see her alive again, or don't you?’

Taking Morse’s answer for granted, he climbed the few steps leading to the neighbouring graveyard. His profile stood out on the backdrop of the white faraway chapel set in the centre of the _recinto_ , while he boasted garrulously, ‘I gave them a chance. All of them. If the glazier had maintained his pulley... If Aspen had taken better care of his ladder…’

As he explained how he had given a 50-50 chance for life to Mrs. Bright, Morse’s brain almost shut out the invasive words, while another part of him kept close tabs of the sentences. His concentration was suddenly broken by the sound of a bell.

Ludo’s head angled towards the sound. ‘Oh, they're closing the cemetery.’ A few seconds went by as the sound of the chimes were carried over by the faint, icy breeze. ‘And there we are, right on cue,’ he announced.

Morse followed the movement of Ludo’s gaze and suddenly beheld her.

An involuntary ‘Violetta?’ passed faintly through his lips.

She wasn’t even following the paths, but made her sinuous way across the graves, in a curiously assured walk. In the incoming dusk, her white dress seeming even paler in contrast to her dark coat, she looked like the heroine of some half-forgotten Gothic tale—some epigone of _The Mysteries of Udolfo_ , or better yet, a designed victim in Bram Stoker’s novel.

‘ _Had she needed to take a shortcut through the burial ground to keep the assigned hour, or was it another derisive, theatrical touch?_ ’ Morse wondered, but his annoyance soon gave way as, for a second, he stood transfixed, watching the smooth pleats of her dress sliding over her thigs and the rhythmical flapping of her fur coat over her leather boots. Violetta slowly climbed up the steps and stopped in front of them, her eyes hooded by heavy lids whose blue tinge could be construed as much to tiredness as to skilful makeup.

‘You really don't have a clue, do you?’ Talenti’s voice shattered the spell, his airy voice lowering as for a confidence. ‘She's a fraud, Morse. Every word she's ever told you was a lie.’

Morse cast a quick look at Violetta. Her face betrayed nothing— a closed mouth and unfocused eyes set in a beautiful face gone bland. His gaze went back to Talenti, who was advertising his goods like a fair barker.

‘—When I found her, she was 15, living barefoot on the backstreets of Naples. I've given her the world.’ He shrugged with studied regret. ‘You don't even know her real name.’

Then, in a gesture so swift that Morse almost didn’t see it coming, Ludo grabbed Violetta by the throat and brought his other hand, now adorned with a gun, over her temple.

The wax doll suddenly came to life, her mouth shaping a contorted ‘O.’ Frantically, her hands rose to her throat, trying to dislodge her husband’s. In vain.

There was no trace of levity in Talenti’s voice now. ‘Put the gun down, Morse. On the floor.’ 

The service gun was icy in Morse’s hand; the blood coursing through his finger on the trigger, the only pulsating part of his body. He had gone so cold he didn’t feel his body anymore.

Violetta’s face distorted further, her features almost running together, blending her beauty into a mass of quivering flesh as the gun pressed against her bare throat. Then, with a tiny gasp, she ceased to struggle and froze, her heavy breathing syncopated and loud, splicing the silence into shattered seconds.

‘Put it down,’ Ludo reiterated in a dulcet tone. 

‘You won't do it.’ 

_A bet. A hope_. Nonetheless, the gun in Morse’s hand kept his aim unwaveringly.

‘Once, perhaps, you would have been right.’ Ludo inhaled sharply, then bared his teeth, snarling, ‘You were meant to be my creature, not _hers_.’ The non-smile turned even more feral. ‘And then you went and spoiled it all, didn't you, my darling?’

The hand holding the gun drove it harder against her flesh and she cried out, a pitiful outcry.

 _So, not so much ‘his useful idiot,’ was he?_ The thought came and went, too fast for Morse to feel any satisfaction.

‘Put—the gun—down.’ Above Violetta’s pasty face, Talenti’s eyes were pool of sharp-flinted obsidian, his teeth catching what remained of the light.

‘Please...’ Violetta breathed. 

She was never to know it, but it was her assumption that Morse had cast her off so utterly that her life had become meaningless which undid him.

‘All right.’

Morse’s hand flipped the gun, its muzzle upturned towards the mock Gothic arch. Slowly he raised his other hand, keeping them both away from his body. His lips thinned and stretched, but the muscular twitch stopped before his teeth showed, in an unconscious mirroring of Talenti’s expression. 

‘All right.’

He extended one hand half-imploringly, as he lowered the gun to knee level with the other, before flexing his knees and depositing it on the floor. Arms still positioned as unthreateningly as he could, he slowly straightened again, palms up.

‘Just let her go.’ At the last moment, he swallowed the ‘please’ hovering on his lips.

With a shove propelling her forward, Talenti released his wife.

Violetta stumbled on the uneven floor, and Morse had to refrain a conditioned reflex to help her find her balance. However, she nimbly crouched at his feet, fetching, and carrying his gun back to Ludo; her eager gaze seeking her husband’s approval, her hand pressed ardently on the lapel of his fawn coat. But he took no notice of her, his own gun still strained at Morse’s chest.

Rooted in the same place, Morse tightened his lips in a bitter line, his widening eyes burning in his effort not to see what they were staring at. His rigid shoulders ached from the strain of keeping his flexed arms as motionless and as unthreatening as possible.

‘Come on, if we're going to get the last boat,’ Violetta said beseechingly; but Ludo paid no heed. ‘I should have done for you in England, but she convinced me that a dead policeman wasn't in our best interests,’ he said with clenched teeth, his eyes boring into Morse’s.

‘You said we were going to let him go. It was just a warning,’ Violetta insisted. ‘That was the promise. That was the plan.’

Ludo nodded then, and slowly backed away from Morse. Without a word, he turned and went down the four steps, back into the alley. Still framed between the Gothic style pillars, Violetta watched him go with a dolorous smile reminiscent of a Giotto pietà, then she turned eyes scintillating with unshed tears towards Morse. He gestured with his chin, pointing towards Talenti, his eyes asking the question he couldn’t utter aloud.

But the answer he got came from another party.

‘Plans change,’ uttered Ludo’s voice. He had climbed back the steps, silent as a cat. Morse had been so focused on Violetta’s face that he never saw him move.

He never clearly saw him squeeze the trigger either. 

The sound of gunshot was followed in quick succession by a shriek of fear and loss in a female voice, and another one, masculine this time— _his own, Morse absently noted_ —, calling out a woman’s name. 

For one infinite second, Violetta’s body spun around, lurching, her arms akimbo, her broken dancing choregraphed by a cruel instructor, then she collapsed in a graceless heap, the sound of her fall muffled by the fur coat spread out on the pavement.

There was another gunshot.

Following the direction of the sound, Morse glimpsed the hand firing that gun—Thursday’s. The DCI was standing behind Talenti, among the graves in _Campo_ ‘N,’ half-shielded by a cypress. Such was the familiarity of his silhouette that Morse wasn’t even remotely surprised.

Successive shots exploded in Morse’s ears, preceded and followed by hurried footsteps. Snatches of sounds drew farther away, and fleetingly Morse realised that, not once, he had really cared about his own safety. Something like a heavy velvet curtain had dropped and cut him off from these theatricals.

Still inhabiting that weird unreality, he fell on his knees by Violetta’s side, his unsteady hand hovering over her face, brushing her hair away from her temples. Her eyes were already looking at him from far away.

‘I'm sorry,’ she gasped painfully. ‘I'm so sorry...’ The corners of her mouth spasmed.

He shushed her then. With a conscious effort born from pity, he folded himself closer to her, supporting her head in the crook of his arm.

‘I've done terrible things,’ Violetta rasped, and in her voice ricocheted echoes of undecipherable horrors.

‘It doesn't matter,’ Morse managed to lie. ‘Nothing matters.’ 

_No, nothing. Nothing but the next few minutes_.

‘It was true—us—always,’ she added with another effort that tore at her throat and at his heart alike, and shattered at long last the hard-won indifference Morse believed was his unbreakable armour.

He didn’t know what to answer that wouldn’t be a denial, a too tardy question, or a well-meant lie, so nothing went through the barrier of his teeth. Her breathing grew even more laboured and Morse bent closer, shielding her from the forbidding darkness.

‘ _Ti amo_ ,’ she murmured so feebly that he had to strain his ears to hear the syllables.

He had not even the time to ponder if her ultimate deathbed confession was another way to extort his forgiveness—a forgiveness that he had denied her from the start. A forgiveness that it wasn’t in his power to bestow.

Her head fell back, and, abruptly, the fragrant weight was a burden, her pliant body took a sudden stiffness—one he knew came more from his perception than from the reality of the human shape lying in his arms.

Without entirely letting her go, Morse opened his coat and she-who-would-always-be-Violetta nestled for the last time on the whiteness of his shirt, her waning warmth barely supplied by Morse’s own. Shutting his eyes, he closed his arms around her, his cheek pressed against her hair, feeling the lithe form he embraced so many times yield to his bidding without any giggles or amorous demands.

Gone were her evasions. Forever silenced was her fear. Only a shell remained.

And he never even knew her name. 

_Damnatio memorie_ at its most effective.

‘ _Animula vagula, blandula_ ,’ he couldn’t help whispering under his breath, his voice quavering as he singsonged the verses, attentive to their inner rhythm, ‘ _Hospes, comesque corporis, Quae nunc abibis in loca, Pallidula, rigida, nuduia, Nec ut soles, dabis jocos_.’

It was cold now, bitterly cold, but Morse didn’t move except to tighten his hold on Violetta. Her head lolled about on his chest, and unbidden, wisps of her hair caught on the rougher fabric of his coat, letting go a last whiff of her perfume.

Only then, slowly, carefully, as if a too hasty gesture could disturb her slumber, did Morse lower her on the hard stone-paved floor and brush a feathery hand over her eyes, shutting away riddles and last pleas behind their sightless depths.

As he shifted mechanically on his toe, preparing to raise from his crouch, he became aware of another sentinel. He looked further up above his shoulder, his eyes meeting a stoic motionless shape. Thursday was standing in the shadows, his trilby pushed over his eyes providing additional shade, his eyes undecipherable.

Not that Morse ever tried to. He knew full well what he’d find.

Inflexibility as obdurate as the man who stiffly stood in the corridor of the nick, saying ‘If you had your mind on the job and not this flighty piece, you might not be in such a mess.’

p>Judgment as severe as Don Alfonso’s eyes in _La Sposa del Demonio, ossia la Cura dell’Amore_ —Violetta’s last operatic outing; Violetta’s first lie, maybe.

Those same eyes shocked him fully back to consciousness of his surroundings, and Morse rose slowly, his stiffened limbs aching as much from the cold as from despair, his rigid neck heavy for bearing the weight of his faults.

‘Sir?’ Morse’s voice said. It was strangely metallic and toneless, all his mellifluous tones obviously spent in that last bout of quoting.

‘Alright, are you?’

‘He missed me, if that’s what you’re asking.’

Morse’s hands, as from their own volition, raised and buttoned up his coat, barely stopping when they encountered a new warm stain crimsoning the cotton of his shirt beneath his opened jacket. Then they busied themselves pulling up his collar closer to his neck.

When he was done, Thursday proffered his hand, and Morse reached out automatically. His own gun felt heavy in his palm, and he peered at it with puzzled eyes.

‘Talenti dropped it,’ Thursday curtly stated. ‘Before he fell into the water. Didn’t come up again.’

‘ _At least, the Old Man’s record won’t be tainted from shooting a man abroad_ ,’ Morse though with no small amount of relief.

He nodded, looked at his service gun pensively, then as if taking a sudden decision, he opened the barrel, took out the bullets and offered them to Thursday. ‘You might as well take them.’

His gaze travelled lower, resting on the motionless form, her white dress a grotesquely pale flame eating at the pavement’s shadows. A tremor shook him, and the bullets came dangerously close to falling on the stairs.

His lips tightening, Thursday put them away into his coat pocket, then, out of the other one, took out a handkerchief that he placed on Violetta’s face. Rigor mortis had not yet settled in and gone, but the face looking up at them was already eerie in its pathetic fixity. With a jerk, Morse turned his back on her, his shoulders rigid.

‘The gate is locked up, I presume.’

‘Probably.’ Thursday’s voice was as gruffly nonsensical as his former bagman’s. ‘Cemetery closed—’ he looked at his watch, and went on with some surprise, ‘—half an hour ago.’

‘Talenti?’

‘Won’t be buying insurance anymore.’

At that lapidary statement, Morse’s shoulders relaxed briefly.

‘What now?’

‘That’s up to the Police— _local_ police. And an ambulance job.’ Thursday walked a few steps away, sat down on the stairs, then out of habit, took out pipe and tobacco pouch out of his pocket. He cast a puzzled look at the result of his fumbling and put the tobacco back. ‘Might speed up the process if you go to the monastery. Someone’s probably still at the _portineria_.’ 

Morse threw him a suspicious look, met with a mild, disinterested one. Thursday resumed looking at his pipe, and, after an uncertain pause, Morse slowly walked out in the suggested direction.

He didn’t have to turn his head to see Thursday’s shoulders relax against the cold pillars that supported the archway.

If the Old Man couldn’t stand his presence anymore, he couldn’t well blame him. He couldn’t stand himself either. 

All he now wished was to get it all over with, and do away with this pathetic excuse of a man called Endeavour Morse. Getting sloshed had never felt more appealing.

  


* * *

  


Apart from the sound of his feet, the silence was deafening. There might not be anyone else on the island other than the weight of centuries, a ghost or two, a body lying on the pavement, and two British coppers sadly out of their jurisdiction.

Morse hoped it weren’t so.

Not by fear of ghosts—immaterial and unproven presences were nothing to him, and nothing at all, really—but they couldn’t well leave the place littered with corpses. Even if ‘littered’ was much too exaggerated a cliché. His own private tragedy was nothing like an Elizabethan play, and in this pitiful opera-like _finale_ only two of the protagonists had ended up pleading Charon for free passage.

However, with the night falling, it was beginning to feel even colder, and he didn’t relish spending the night in the open when the wind had picked up additional strength, piercing his coat with multitudinous icy darts and squeezing his neck with frosty fingers. Fleetingly, he wondered where he had misplaced the scarf Monica once gave him, before shrugging away the extraneous thought.

Morse walked briskly, until the vaguely oriental shape of the Church tower loomed on the nearest horizon. He had only to follow the path leading to the three-sides cloister before entering the neighbouring one, more secluded and peaceful, adjoining the church.

He had not long to wait before he encountered another human being.

A wiry man, muffled inside a bulky coat, gestured impatiently at him from the opposite arcade, probably thinking him a late, distracted mourner. The hand waiving at Morse from between the Romanesque pillars prompted a quick, mirroring answer, and Morse, stepping quickly over the low wall, crossed the quadrangle. He reached into his jacket pocket. In so doing, he opened his coat and remembered too late, seeing the older man’s startled recoil, that his shirt was soiled with Violetta’s blood.

‘ _Sono un poliziotto britannico_ ,’ Morse said. ‘ _C’è stato_ —’ He hesitated, searching for the right words, then decided to blurt out the real state of affairs. Police couldn’t come fast enough, anyway. ‘ _Qui c’è stato un omicidio_. (There has been a murder here.)’

He waived his warrant card in the face of the flabbergasted middle-aged man, who retreated one step further, but kept craning his neck to see it better. That sight didn’t seem to soften his apprehension, as his squinting eyes fought with a parse, slanted light, distributed through the enclosure.

‘ _Inglese?_ ’ he queried in a worried voice.

‘ _Sì._ ’ Morse swallowed and added helpfully, ‘ _Il corpo è vicino alla porta del quinto recinto_. (The body is close to the door of the fifth _recinto_.)’

If it were even possible, the man’s face grew more alarmed. His retreating gained speed, and Morse had to flung at him urgently in Italian, ‘There’s another English policeman with it. Tell the Police to come quickly!’

The man reached the end of the open gallery. Before he disappeared through a door, Morse added urgently, ‘Don’t forget the ambulance!’ wondering what form it would take in this city built on water. 

No doubt they were used to have bodies brought to them, in this Island of the Dead, not carried away to the mainland.

Minutes went by, made only slower by uncertainty. The graceful enclosure cut off the wind, a welcome respite from that unrelenting, slow undermining of strength. Morse wondered how Thursday fared. No doubt, he had found shelter under the doorway, in one of the side recesses. Another offence the older man would have no reason to feel grateful for.

Morse began to walk nervously back and forth to keep his blood from freezing, doggedly tightening his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering.

Under his feet, prestigious dead, their names now long forgotten, slumbered on. The names engraved on the slabs affixed on the floor were now quite undecipherable, he was finding out, when the sound of footsteps made him raise his head from his half-focused attempts to read the Latin names.

A Franciscan brother was hastening towards him, hailing him in surprising good English. A few wrinkles in the corner of his eyes highlighted their strangely luminous green that even the shadows could not entirely mute, and the deep marking around his mouth could only have been etched by deep sorrow or frequent laughter. But now, only solemnity was spread over his features as he stopped in front of Morse.

‘Good evening, Brother,’ Morse replied. He might not have kept his surprise out of his voice, as the man replied. ‘Once, I was a Cambridge man, but now I’m _Fratello_ Anselmo.’

Morse declined his identity, reiterating the facts and keeping his tale short. A criminal, wanted in England, had shot his accomplice before fleeing. He had fallen into the Laguna.

‘Ha!’ commented the monk. ‘I infer he fell near _recinto_ VII? The currents are—You might not recover him.’

A shiver he couldn’t master shook Morse’s frame. The brother cast a wise glance at him. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to step into the _portineria_ for a while?’

‘No, thank you. I must…’ A wave of the hand encompassed it all: duty, pain, guilt, building distress.

Somehow, Brother Anselmo seemed to sense it all. He nodded. ‘Then, if you care for it, we’ll bring you both some hot coffee, before the Police come. It may take a while before they do.’ He flashed a small smile tinged with forbearance. ‘Yesterday was New Year’s Day, you know.’

‘ _Grazie mille_ ,’ Morse said, remembering his frozen body as something infinitely distant and unreal, and thinking about the Old Man stoically standing vigil by Violetta’s side.

‘And I’ll be there when they arrive,’ Brother Anselmo stated quietly. ‘Matteo was a little—how could we say—flustered by it all.’ Again, the slight deprecating smile made a fleeting appearance.

‘I understand,’ Morse said, hard put not to cross his arms over the too-telling stain, even thought it was safely hidden from sigh by jacket and coat.

They exchanged a few words after that, and then the conversation was at an end, both men going their separate ways.

  


* * *

  


Slowly, Morse retraced his steps—passing under the same arches, treading over the same memorial tablets, and, in the same empty alleys, passing by the same crosses casting faint shadows created by an indifferent moon. 

Even if those featured prominently in his paintings, Caspar David Friedrich wouldn't have approved of the setting. The gloomy scene was too squarely laid out—a testimony of the rational command coming from Napoleon when he had decreed all Venetians would from now on buried in the island, for sanitary reasons.

Indeed, the plan was too squared, like a weird Roman town, built around Cardo Maximus and Decumanus. What a contrast with the twisting streets of the City of the Living on the opposite shore! Not the backdrop Morse had imagined for his last meeting with the Talentis.

When he reached _Campo_ ‘N,’ he couldn’t help wondering if his errant steps trod the very same earth and rarefied grass that Violetta's feet had brushed, not so long ago. Angrily, he shook his head to dispel the memory, but her last entrance couldn’t be erased so easily.

Thursday was at the same place, frozen in the same position, it would seem, his unlit pipe still nestled in his unmoving hands.

‘They’re coming,’ announced Morse. ‘The concierge is calling the Police, and the brothers will send us some coffee.’ It was on the tip of his tongue; he wavered, but finally didn’t mention the offer of shelter in the _portineria_ , feeling that Thursday might take his consideration for a veiled insult.

Thursday mumbled an assent, and stiffly got up from his remote seating. He drew level with Morse, who stood a few feet apart, eyes strained on anything but the broken thing lying sheltered under the arches. 

“What were you thinking?’ he roared in a low voice.

Glad to find an outlet for his pent-up feelings, Morse grabbed at the sentence, hurling it back with relish. ‘What was I thinking?’

Without pausing to dissect the parroting of his question, the DCI went on: ‘Going off on your own, without any official warrant or—’ The hand holding the pipe swept up in an almost perfect arc. His tone went from disgusted surprise to reproof. ‘Arresting them on your own? Away from your turf? Taking off with your service gun? Completely off your rocker, are you?’

The last reproof was countered with a sentence flung out with a snarl; however, it didn’t stop the flood of the Old Man’s recriminations. 

‘What were you thinking?’ he insisted. This time, the question sprang forth with a strength born of fury and disbelief.

Morse said stiffly, ‘I had to. Who would have—’

He was fated not to find the space for explanation before his former Governor got it off his chest, as Thursday bellowed, with additional heat, ‘Couldn’t leave us time to build up the case?’

‘What case? There was no case, remember?’ 

Morse’s hand went to the nape of his neck and tussled his hair vigorously. He turned to face Thursday in a smooth movement, keeping his gaze up so it wouldn’t fall inadvertently on his latest guilt. ‘Weren’t you adamant there was no investigation to make?’

Thursday’s lips stretched in an ugly line, the lines around his eyes creasing deeper. ‘There was, obviously. You gathered interesting evidence, at least. And Strange—’

‘So Strange is to be believed when I—’

‘—Strange,’ repeated Thursday stubbornly, ‘gave us all the details that you didn’t see fit to explain in your letter. Mr. Bright, whom I called as soon as I got your file, took all the necessary steps. Things were rolling when I left by the boat train.’ He heaved a deep sigh. ‘So, for the last time, what were you thinking?’

Morse made an aborted gesture, suddenly deflating. He seemed to shrink within himself. Without his anger, he felt suddenly bereft and cold. ‘I had no choice. Talenti used me for a fool. Or so he thought.’

‘Not the only one.’

‘What?’ Whatever Morse expected, it wasn’t this. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Talenti had a few—’

‘—dupes?’

‘—coppers in his sleeve, using them to get to the main cases at the nicks.’

‘Leicester, Uttoxeter, Dover, Oxford?’

‘No. Not Uttoxeter. Not yet. But Talenti tried to.’

They relapsed into uneasy silence, carefully avoiding to glare at each other. Thursday put his hands in his pocket, and stared at his feet.

Morse’s eyes fell on a cypress, the portion of a wall, a cross—all shaped like cardboard cuttings by the moon glacial lighting. Anything but the DCI or his shadow. Now that Thursday’s irritated voice wasn’t pressing upon him, he could reflect on that irritating question.

 _Had he been so naive as to believe that he might force Talenti—at gun point of all things!—to confess, then meekly follow him to the nearest Police station?_

Morse had to admit he did not. Nor was he so green that he overlooked that the process of extradition was a time-consuming, difficult pursuit; a bloody administrative monster fed with paperwork and evidence galore.

In his heart of hearts, he knew that the impulse that had made him travel hastily through half the Continent was to prove— _to himself, to Thursday; to Talenti, most of all_ —that he wasn’t the fool some took him for, that his intellect was still effective, that the ‘little bit of finesse’ he had so boasted about was still his to master.

He had wanted to assuage himself and to redeem himself.

 _It was pride, pure and simple_. 

_And it was also his downfall_.

He had no great expectations to get out of it alive, as he had hinted in his letter. Now he could at last admit it. No official backup, no real support from the Italian Police force, no writ that allowed him to make an arrest on foreign soil. How could he hope to succeed, armed only with logic, rightful outrage, and naked truth?

 _Fatum_ only knew how he had managed to get his gun through Customs! The retort—'events so strange that even a novelist would be hard put to write them!’—that he had snapped back to Thursday a few minutes ago didn't even begin to describe them.

 _Bruised pride. That's what it was_.

 _And guilt_. 

_Guilt that, by his involuntary endorsing of Ludo's shenanigans, he had been made an accessory before the facts, besides being sent to slaughter like the proverbial canary in the mineshaft by his alleged friend_.

Both men relapsed into silence, not even trusting their eyes to keep mute. They kept them carefully focused on innocuous objects, relieved to direct them on their cups of coffee and the insulated bottle brought by a small, wiry man.

Not Matteo, Morse saw, but a younger man who kept casting glances at Violetta’s legs—especially at the knee left uncovered by her fall—, when he gave them the promised hot beverage, with the compliments of _Fratello_ Anselmo. When he left, Morse hastily reached out and drew the pleated silk carefully over Violetta’s calves, as Thursday took pains to look the other way.

Time stretched once more, stilted seconds following seconds seemingly stuck in a flow of encompassing awfulness.

Morse leaned on the wall and kept his eyes shut against the night, willing seconds to flow faster. He lost the counts of them, merely concentrating on the heaving of his chest, on the blood pumping through his veins, thumping in his ears, willing the heat of the coffee passing through his throat to imbue his congealed arteries.

How far away was the liberation of flowing through minutes steered by music, closing one’s eyes while being swept away by arias ruthlessly organised under a chef’s baton! There was nothing pleasurable, clear-cut or even logical here; merely uncertainty, blunder, and grisly death. Time going to waste.

Slivers of sounds penetrated the fog in his mind, and he pushed against the wall to right himself, getting painfully away from the icy prop keeping him on his feet. Whether from wilful self-punishment or a belated feeling of propriety, he had once more disdained to sit on the steps next to Thursday and chosen instead to stand solitary on the pathway, his face turned in the direction of the nearest shore, showing his back to the corpse.

Regular crunching sounds caught his attention again, resonating doubly in the encompassing silence. Sand and pebbles under several pairs of feet. 

Morse turned slowly towards _Campo_ ‘N,’ his gesture mirrored by Thursday who had risen from his uncomfortable seat. With a pang, Morse noticed that the latter’s movements were stiffer, and it was only when his mind dwelt on his Governor’s clumsiness that his own slight limp entered his conscience, as he took an instinctive step forward. Suddenly, the icy damp became all the more unnerving.

‘They’re coming,’ Thursday said unnecessarily.

‘Yes.’

When he walked in the direction of the swelling sounds, now startlingly closer, a tiny shock of pain shook Morse to full consciousness again; so it wasn’t the coffee provided by the Franciscan brothers or the stinging agony of his debacle that fuelled him with energy sufficient to conceal how thoroughly he felt defeated. Eyes strained, he spotted the Italian Policemen between the tombs—their uniforms unfamiliar except for the occasional chance meeting in the streets of Venice; the Italian language reduced to surges of sounds, both familiar sounding and utterly baffling in their lilts and sharp silences.

The earth suddenly seemed to surge under his feet, and he had to close his fingers upon his other hand to find a precarious balance and keep from falling.

Morse didn’t make another gesture until he had to introduce himself and answer the curt questions asked by a harassed officer not much older than him. Afterwards, he stood motionless and apart from the group performing the gestures he had seen done a thousand times before in his native country, watching Thursday speak in low tones with the officer in charge.

Minutes flowed by; faster, faster, this time. Additional darkness slowly surrounded the graves, threatening to pull Morse under—darkness punctured by luminous shafts from the torches. From this encroaching night, surged a voice—coming from the officer who had requested his identity—saying in a somewhat tentative English, ‘ _Vice Questore_ (Chief Superintendent) Colavita give regard to you, and asks if you meet him tonight.’

‘I will,’ replied Thursday, with no outward surprise. 

Morse looked at him sharply, brow furrowing, but he kept his own council. He took some additional steps away, away from the bustle of activity surrounding Viol—the woman who had called herself Violetta.

Finally, a folding stretcher bearing a form shrouded in white was taken along the path. Morse turned his back on that, too.

He blinked hard, once, twice, and came out of a fever of forgetfulness, having sleepwalked all the way back to the entrance of the cloister—finding himself under the Gothic door topped with a statue of Archangel Saint Michael trampling on a pitifully tiny dragon while holding scales in one hand and a spear in the other one. 

As he was about to follow Thursday on the quay and step into the Police speedboat, Morse could not help glancing back at the immaculate sculpture adorning the tympanum. Shrouded in shadow, the scales and spear cast in black iron were now invisible, leaving the winged champion woefully bereft of weapon and unable to met out judgment—a sad, solitary figure mocking the hopes lingering in the human mutely considering it.

The irony wasn’t lost on an unappreciative audience. 

_Justice. Retribution_. Empty words, the kind one bandied about to inflate one’s importance. 

‘ _The dead deserve justice_ ,’ Morse had once told the Talentis. But he hadn’t been able to bring even that to the dead mouths that cried out for justice. Or to find uneasy peace by bringing retribution to those who deserved it.

Shoulders bowing under the stone archangel’s glare, Morse jumped onboard. The boat rocked under his weight, then swiftly settled along the usual ebb and flow of the choppy waves. Meekly, Morse sat down next to Thursday, straining to keep away from his bulk by squeezing against the side.

Ahead was the time for reckoning. 

His.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I needed some sort of closure at the end of ‘ _Zenana_ ,’ so I wrote this fic, as we may go forward to 1971 with many questions still pending… I loved the ending of the episode and the parallels between opera and real-life drama, but I wished to stretch my writing by imagining how it might have gone if the events unfolded in the real-life San Michele Cemetery. Hence the rewriting of the last scenes.  
>   
> For historical reasons –most of the remaining cemetery of San Michele was built in the 1800s—I changed the dates on **_Ludovicus Talenti_ ’s epitaph**, even though it is supposed to document Lodovico Talenti’s grave: he was vicar of the San Giovanni Crisostomo Church in Venice.  
>   
> You may find an **overview photograph of the San Michele island** [here](https://oliaklodvenitiens.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/vu-satellite-du-cimetic3a8re-san-michele.jpg).  
>   
> Morse quotes a **Latin poem**. Roman emperor Hadrian’s supposedly uttered these verses on his deathbed. For some translations, see [here](https://followinghadrian.com/2013/07/10/animula-vagula-blandula-hadrians-farewell-to-life/) or [here](https://briefpoems.wordpress.com/tag/animula-vagula-blandula/).  
>   
> According to this [blog](https://www.theveniceinsider.com/san-michele-cemetery-venice/), the **Franciscan brothers** left the monastery in 2008. I made use of this info in the story.  
>   
> Comments will make my day, so don't hesitate to write feedback. Constructive criticisms or rants about S7 are also welcome!


	2. Limbo

Morse knew what was in store for him, he had seen it enough already. Yet, he meant to pay to the full. Atonement for his foolishness. Fallout for his failure.

For a second, he felt catapulted back in time, a youthful DC silently biding his time and biting his lips under one of Mr. Bright’s reprimands. However, the like of those would be the best he could expect now. Time had taught him nothing, it would seem.

Would his career even recover from it? Be it exhaustion or emptiness, he didn’t really care right now.

Thinking about the Chief Superintendent brought along memory of the elusive Mrs. Bright, and a stab of pain went through him, encircling his chest in a ring of fire and making him inhale sharply.

He had never even seen her likeness, except from the blurred, badly printed photograph featured in the _Oxford Mail_. Nonetheless she was the one uppermost in his mind. Even the victims of the other ‘freak accidents’ he had painfully reconstructed as evidence, even Pippa Tedbury whose house he had unwittingly used as a love nest, weren’t as alive in his mind as Mrs. Bright was.

_If he had known beforehand, he could have—_

And, again slithered guilt, tightening its coils around his heart, even though he couldn’t possibly have known, couldn’t have acted to prevent it.

Morse was so focused inward that he didn’t pay actual attention to his surroundings, even to Thursday’s careful enunciations in Italian, his accent thick but getting slicker with use. Only snippets of sentences flowed in his ears, ‘— _when I visited yesterday—the file was faxed the day before_ —,’ unimportant words speeding forth, the no less careful replies checked carefully for fear of speaking too fast into untrained ears.

A switch snapped inside Morse’s mind. Abruptly, the sounds shaped themselves into words, the words into sentences; the words coalesced into logical order, and he turned his head sharply towards Thursday. 

Without noticing—or rather, noticing it too well, but not deigning to acknowledge it—, Thursday went on with his conversation with the _Sovrintendente_ (Senior Sergeant).

Piecing the fragments, Morse grasped that Thursday had been in touch with the _Polizia di Stato_ , had made enquiries about the Talentis, and had even enquired about his whereabouts—his, Morse’s.

At that, he frowned. But the folding of his brow had no more effect than his previous glare. Thursday continued to question and reply as quietly, and the Italian sergeant to struggle with the speed of his retorts.

Their boat made its way speedily between the buoys, splicing the foam into dark drops, and soon they reached their destination through Rio di Santa Giustina and Rio di San Lorenzo. The other boat, where Violetta’s body was laid, lagged, but it would get there soon enough.

Without demur, Morse let himself be led out of his seat. A few steps brought him through the quay and into the building, Thursday preceding him. 

The lobby was like any other Police Station lobby. Mismatched furniture, smell of stale cigarettes and sweat, lighting more yellowish than white, and the weary look of the policeman sitting behind the front desk for the night shift.

As soon as he was inside, be it the abrupt change of temperature or the surprising refuge from the wind and the damp, a wave of heat engulfed Morse. He felt sweat moisten his brown, and he passed a tired hand over his eyes. As he did, darkness lurched at him again despite the aggressive lights, and he swayed, but he recovered so fast that he hoped that no one had seen it. Especially not Thursday.

He cleared his throat but had no time for any question, as an imperious gesture no less authoritative for being silent, directed him to an interrogation room.

Thursday turned around and watched him go. His hand reached the brim of his trilby and he pushed it a little upward, then his hand fell slowly back along his side. He never even tried to speak to Morse.

And this is how they parted ways, in unfriendly silence.

  


* * *

  


The interrogation room wasn’t that different from the ones back home, either. Briefly, Morse wondered how they’d be at Kidlington Station, what shape the ubiquitous tables would take, and if he’d even get a chance to sit across from one in the role of the inquisitive party.

At present, he sat in front of a little square table in dark wood. It was slightly wobbly, just enough to be a nuisance each time he applied pressure on the faulty table leg. Under his nose, a cigarette finished burning to the end in a tin ashtray. The smell had an acrid, almost mouldy taste—reminding him of Claudine’s _Gauloises_. For an instant Morse’s stomach heaved, then settled uneasily. But why would a Venetian policeman smoke French cigarettes?

Anyway, ‘sitting’ was hardly an accurate description.

If Morse has been in the proper frame of mind to ponder vocabulary for a crossword puzzle, he’d have pointed out that he was slumped against the back of his seat, the only cushioning from the hard, over-worn wood being his jacket slung on the back of the chair. He was now in his shirt sleeves, the ugly wine-red stain prominent on his chest—its faint copper odour sufficiently pervasive to overcome even the cigarette smell. Several crooked stubs were crushed next to the one still alight. 

It had taken time enough— _interminable seconds stretching into incessant minutes, hours perhaps_ —to go over Morse’s detailed doings since he had picked up the envelope slid under the door of his hotel room. At least, despite his carrying his service gun—now enclosed and labelled in an evidence bag—it had been established to everybody’s satisfaction that Morse had indeed been Talenti’s latest intended victim.

Morse’s haggard look and untidy appearance made him look even more slovenly in contrast to the Italian policeman’s neat uniform and intent stare. Dark, sleek hair parted sideways, razor-sharp eyes, and hands crossed on the table before him, _Ispettore Superiore_ (Senior Inspector) Pacella could almost seem to have a faint look of Peter Jakes at his most caustic about him, if Morse blinked hard enough. 

But he didn’t. Not for that reason, anyway, as he stubbornly tried to keep his eyes open when a weight—gone heavier by the minute—tried to shut them close against his will.

The trickle of questions had stopped for a while, and the atmosphere in the room seemed to tense in anticipation for the next salvo.

The silence went on, and on, and on, and on. Morse’s eyelids dropped closed, and he opened them with a start, looking straight ahead into the gaze of the other policeman; then he felt his attention wavering again. Desperately, he dug his nails into his palms, trying to pinch himself to provoke some sense of his actual presence in that room.

But it was not a dream or, more accurately, a nightmare. The _Agente_ standing stiffly under the window was adequately real, even if he kept still. The overhead neon light shone bright, making Morse’s tired eyes water, and he was suddenly aware that he hadn’t swallowed anything solid since his hasty lunch. As if it had needed that acknowledgment, his stomach faintly growled.

‘How did you know where to look for them?’ Pacella’s voice was quiet, impassive. Was it the Italian language lending the words a curious softness? Or the cotton wool lining Morse’s brain softening the words with a faraway echo? He had to concentrate to hear the following question. ‘Why here, in Venice?’

Morse felt another wave of fury shake off his exhaustion. So now he had to disclose his past affair— gloriously reckless, then turned pitifully sordid—and they would be kept on record, his gullibility and shame, exposed secrets for coppers to deride easily in both countries.

Still, he had no choice but to tell it all.

Their first meeting at La Fenice—the glances cast over her naked shoulder when Violetta walked sensuously before him in the corridor; hands brushing, eyes riveting, then naked flesh meeting for the oldest dance known to mankind. How she had pleaded for forgiveness afterwards, yet refused to confess her sins. How she had told him that she came back each year, her pilgrimage over her father’s ghostly memory. 

How she had unwittingly been the missing link between the scattered pieces of the criminal puzzle.

The man in front of him took notes of the date and the opera name. He would probably check it with the Fenice: maybe she had booked her seat from abroad, and left a name.

 _Another one that wouldn’t be Violetta Talenti—the aptly borrowed name of the Verdi courtesan, Violetta Valéry?_ No outward movement betrayed Morse’s epiphany, except a brief widening of irises in eyes lined with red, skin stretched tightly against the bones.

 _What was staged? What wasn’t? Violetta filling out a seat at the Fenice each year to commemorate her father? Was it even true? Was is another lie piled on other desiccated lies, or, as ‘Ludo’ had told him one day, without seeming to put any import on it, did Violetta hate opera?_

_But both weren’t necessarily excluding each other_.

 _She might have hated opera and gone anyway; the pilgrimage made even more a penance by her not appreciating the art. Or she might have loved opera and been reticent to proffer that part of her innermost self to the oh-so-tender mercies of her husband_. 

_Or was he—again—projecting onto her what he had wanted her to be? Maybe La Fenice was merely one of Violetta’s usual hunting grounds. He had fallen easily enough into her traps._

_He was still falling into them._

The following questions were easier to answer.

Morse unwound the reasoning that had woven ostensible freak accidents into a more ominous tapestry of lies, deceit, crime, and enrichment; sketching out what he knew about the _California Amity Redemption and Reimbursement_ which had bought the hapless victims’ policies.

How the Talentis had managed to tip the scales, Morse couldn’t fathom yet, but Talenti’s confession made their interferences obvious. Despite having waxed lyrical about his hands being ‘innocent of blood,’ blood clots were still encrusted beneath Ludo’s fingernails: he had admitted as much, tampering with the Brights’ Christmas decorations. 

And, like the proverbial criminals, the Talentis had come back to the scenes of their crimes. Their presence at Lady Mathilda College the day following Dr Nancy Deveen’s fall to her death attested to that. It was no coincidence, as was it no coincidence that they had scampered away after Ludo’s sighting of the files that Morse had recklessly left lying on his desk. As to the next question, could the British Police piece together all their moves? That was uncertain, but, surely, those instances were evidence enough. And, even more damning, the use of a house Mrs. Talenti knew that her rightful tenant would never reclaim…

Morse’s voice wavered with disgust despite his best endeavours, the recollection of their frolicking now tainted with senseless loss of life and a heartlessness no less awful for being ignored by one of the adulterous parties.

There was blessed silence after that last disclosure. Silence that Morse embraced greedily, trying to wrap his mind in it, finding solace in it for a while, before the next onslaught.

Fortunately, the next inquiries brought relief: all the insights Morse had into the couple would be welcome. Conjecture was something he was gladder to embrace, despite feeling his mind going glassy with exhaustion.

Without dwelling upon his heartache, he summarised all the elements he had gathered about the Talentis’ activity and took pains to underline that they might have some additional ties with Venice: wasn’t the logo on the letter headed paper of the _California Amity Redemption and Rembursement_ the Lion of Saint Mark? They had both signed it, and even if its official place of business were in London, it couldn’t be mere chance… 

The Italian was still scribbling things down in his notebook, his eyes shrewd and attentive. There were crinkles at the corners of his eyes, and as they creased, Morse realised that he was older than he first seemed. 

He added: ‘All that Ludovico Talenti said was a riddle set upon another one.’

But the questions were relentless. They came like a spatter of rain turning into a hurricane, those questions, not leaving him time to breathe, to take shelter; the drops sharp as swords, the cold sliding into his pores until it moulded his face. In front of him, Pacella’s expression showcased only blasé curiosity. From the look of him, he didn’t expect much, thus firing up all Morse’s stubbornness to prove him wrong.

 _What could he build out of that edifice of lies?_ Not much, Morse feared, but some facts could be harvested.

Talenti never told Morse what country he hailed from. Ludovico Talenti’s family —and again, at the sound of the name he couldn’t help noticing the swift mastering of a smirk on his protagonist’s lips—was supposedly an old one; Talenti dealt in shipping and artwork. 

Morse snorted derisively.

Actually, it might mean that Ludo was trafficking art, commissioning fakes, dealing with art heists, or cleaning out treasure caches left from the war, whose artifacts never went back to their rightful owners. He certainly seemed to move around Continental Europe a lot, favouring places where rich collectors mightn’t be quite too fussy about the pedigree of their purchases.

The pen was writing more quickly now, the face intent.

‘Any picture of him?’

‘Not that I know of.’

Despite all the charitable work Ludo was supposedly engaged in, Morse had never seen a picture of the Talentis in the Society pages of the _Oxford Mail_. Nor in any other newspaper, for that matter.

Pacella didn’t ask about Violetta’s. Morse averted his eyes and focused them on his hands; they were gripping the ledge of the table so hard that the knuckles showed white. A post-mortem photograph would no doubt be sent, now, as they spoke, to the appropriate venues, and appropriate inquiries made to trace her.

His thoughts following the logical outcome, Morse proffered helpfully, ‘Signora Talenti lived in Naples at some point.’ At least, that’s what Ludo declared, and what Talenti said had to be taken with a grain of salt. ‘Fifteen years ago, or whereabout. She might have been—’ 

The sentence was left unfinished, as, once more, he was shaken into awakening by an unexpected rage. 

_Had she really sold herself to the highest bidder, or been ‘a cheap prostitute,’ as he had so promptly labelled another ‘resourceful’ young woman?_

Morse’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He swallowed a faint trace of bile and said it, nonetheless.

But there was nothing cheap about Violetta either. If she had relished her luxurious living, and been so wary to abandon it, wasn’t it because she had known destitution and hardships? 

Naples had been one of the most heavily bombed cities in the South of Italy. Unenumerable bombs had fallen, reducing the city half to ruins, and the retreating Germans didn’t help matters afterwards. It had taken years to rebuild, and to house and feed its inhabitants.

 _Was Violetta’s family caught in this desperate chaos? Had she been a barely out of her teens orphan, left alone to fend for herself? Was her father one of the entrepreneurs who had gambled over the reconstruction and lost, amidst sharks more ferocious than he was? Or was her past even more shady, helplessly mingled with the resurrecting Camorra?_

His questions would probably never find any answers. Her reminiscences about opera spoke of a certain standard of living, even if opera was enjoyed by people from all social classes, and her unabashed relish of the luxuries of life, be they fine food, jewels, or luxurious clothes, had an almost relaxed touch that came from habit.

To sum it all, Morse knew nothing sound except for the Talentis’ criminal proclivities and their taste for real-life theatricals.

 _Ispettore Superiore_ Pacella smiled a thin, ironical smile. ‘In short, apart your... deductions, you have nothing more solid to add.’

Morse stayed still for a long, incredulous moment, seemingly unable to grasp what was said. Then he said in a low voice, ‘Yet more than the whole of the Thames Valley Police found out.’ Sweeping aside the objection he knew was coming with a sharp twist of the wrist, he added, ‘I was told to let it drop. I didn’t. And here we are.’

There was faint pride in the quiet statement.

Pacella caught it and his lips stretched again. For once, this flash of a smile was devoid of irony, a little more candid.

Morse closed his eyes, willingly, this time. A great shudder went through him, and he stretched his neck, trying to ease the twinge in the muscles. 

‘No, you couldn’t,’ agreed the Italian’s voice in the short lull. ‘Not after they mistook you for a fool. More fool they.’

It was almost like absolution, that sentence.

Silence came between them again. Almost friendly, this time.

Now that he had his statement out of his chest, Morse breathed more easily. He felt lighter, but this lightness was misleading: it was the lightness of emptiness, not of atonement. 

Almost absentmindedly, he felt something giving way; tension unwound suddenly, and, as he felt his muscles relax all at once, he felt lightheaded.

They say you might see your entire life when you drown: would it happen like a hurricane or wave after wave crashing in? It was nothing of the sort with him, he had experienced. Each time he had thought himself mortally threatened, he had frozen still without no thoughts at all, mesmerised by the sheer impossibility of the reality confronting him.

He had also felt it, in those few seconds when Talenti had squeezed the trigger. Blind, animal panic, and an unvoiced scream surging from deep inside himself, denying his approaching death. And afterwards, ugly, naked relief that he had escaped the fate Ludo had planned for him all along.

It was almost the same now, except for it being the death of his soul—a soul he had obstinately denied existed. The last remnant of conscience clinging to mortal flesh; the last remnant of intellect fighting the odds. The ultimate combat of intelligence for dignity.

He felt utterly empty, aimless, and that emptiness was staggering.

His hands were pushing against the table top, as if to distance himself from that reality, and he became aware of the strain when it suddenly ceased. When he raised his eyes, he saw that Pacella’s gaze was also directed at his fingers.

The bruising quiet of the room was suddenly shaken by voices nearby. The _Agente_ made his first voluntary movement since he came to stand in the corner of the room where he was patiently waiting. Morse and Pacella had the same puzzled gesture, both pricking their ears and turning inquisitive eyes towards the door. 

It opened and the origin of the disturbance revealed itself.

Thursday didn’t look the less for wear, Morse noticed with aggravation. Unquestionably, the lines around his mouth and eyes were more pronounced, but he seemed fresher than he had any right to be. The man standing at Thursday’s elbow was less heavily built, but the keen eyes were directed at Morse with the same thoughtful frown. He was probably in his sixties, and although he wasn’t in uniform—not that surprising if he had hastily risen out of bed—, he had no trouble in projecting the aura of authority.

Unconsciously, Morse righted himself against the back of the chair, brushing his hair back from his brow. He felt rather than saw Pacella tense and jump to his feet. ‘ _Vice Questore_ Colativa!’ he uttered with some surprise. ‘I didn’t—’

‘At ease, Pacella,’ the man said. His gaze travelled to the other side of the room. ‘Stefanelli, we won’t need you anymore.’ He waited until the policeman had exited the room before crossing it and standing at his subordinate’s elbow, looking down pointedly at Morse. Belatedly, the DS realised that he hadn’t risen to his feet. He shifted in his seat, preparing to get up, when the _Vice Questore_ gestured him back into his chair.

‘I’ve heard a lot about you, Sergeant Morse, in the last hour.’

There were so many things to reply to that that Morse hesitated a second too long, and the occasion was lost. The superior officer went on smoothly, ‘My old friend here—’ A turn of the head and a quick glance over his shoulder specified who he was talking about, if anyone in the room had any hesitation on the subject. ‘—has explained everything that needed explaining.’

Torn between relief and surging irritation, Morse kept silent. So did Thursday. But the latter’s quietness was more of the fierce kind.

‘The file and the photofits were on my desk by December 27, along with a letter from _Ispettore Superiore Ziobe_.’

‘So—’

‘Your visit here a few days ago was quite helpful.’ Colativa nodded benevolently at Morse. ‘As was your giving us your address.’ He smiled thinly. ‘ _Ispettore Ziobe_ was quite grateful to know of it.’

Morse’s mouth opened in a protest that went unheard, as Pacella’s head swivelled from one man to the other. He gathered his notes and pen hesitantly. 

The gaze of his superior fell on the hands busying themselves on the table. ‘Pacella’s notes will not make it to the typewriter or an official report, I’m afraid,’ the _Vice Questore_ said in a mock regretful tone. ‘Sorry for the waste of your time, Pacella.’

The _Ispettore Superiore_ took his notebook, browsed through it, and tore out a few pages. He offered them to his superior who shoved them just as silently into the inner pocket of his jacket. 

‘Good.’ He surveyed both men seated at the table. ‘We are grateful to the Oxford Police for collaborating with us for trying to arrest Signor… ah… Devere. Hugo Devere.’ He cast a swift look at Morse. ‘You knew him under the name Ludo Talenti. And, talents he had aplenty. He’s wanted for extorsion in Verona, and in the Netherlands for art trafficking. A fake Rembrandt.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Tonight’s business never happened.’

At the name of the country, Morse shook his head. ‘Amsterdam?’

‘Amsterdam?’ parroted Colativa.

‘Just a thought. It’s just—Talenti mentioned a trip there.’ A nerve tightened in Morse’s cheek. ‘Nothing significant, maybe.’

‘You forgot the most important,’ interfered Thursday, addressing himself to the _Vice Questore_. ‘Devere, if such was his name, conned the University of Oxford for six months.’

Morse frowned uncertainly. ‘Sir?’

‘Took ’em for nearly half a million pounds. Charity, he said.’ Thursday squared his shoulders. ‘Dr. Deveen alone had some suspicions.’ He avoided Morse’s gaze obstinately, but he couldn’t help hearing his sharp intake of breath. ‘It so happened the charity beneficiated Devere. Took off with the money. We learned about it just before Christmas; the University wasn’t keen to—’

‘Where’s the body?’ burst out of Morse’s lips. ‘Did you recover it?’

‘Drowned, and it’s for the best. No body. No one to blame,’ Colativa said. ‘The murderer tried to draw you into a trap, failed to kill you, killed the girl, bolted, and fell into the water. Bad luck.’ He shrugged fatalistically. ‘And the evidence bag containing your gun got lost. It happens.’

‘But, Sir…’ Morse couldn’t help saying.

‘You were on leave, and the esteemed _Ispettore Ziobe_ came to warn you, as evidence in Oxford and our intelligence pointed to a murder attempt on you. You should be grateful.’

Morse tightened his lips, his brain working as furiously as his intense exhaustion allowed him.

 _So that was the official tale!_ The accolades would be Thursday’s if he chose to accept them, and the Italian Police’s, to have collared a corpse that had evaded coppers from several states. Extorsion was a serious enough crime for the _Polizia di Stato_ to investigate. That it was him, Morse, who had managed to lead them all to the Talentis would be lost in an agreed-upon silence. After being a dupe to a murderous swindler, he would be the useful idiot to the ones who upheld the Law… 

And this fabrication, they would enforce. If not, they would probably hold his keeping Police files at home against him. The very same files he had sent to Miss Thursday with all his notes. The files Talenti had seen at his home. Files like those Strange had already remarked upon. His slackness in procedures was his Achilles’ heel and Thursday knew it well. _A good inspector, but a poor policeman_.

And, worse than the useful idiot, he would play the role of the naïve fool who had not been able to understand that he was walking into a trap, needing the last-minute intervention of his former Governor to save his arse. Some coppers in Oxford would have a field day with that.

That it was almost all true wasn’t less damaging. 

He knew he was walking into a trap. On the contrary, he had counted on it. Being the easy bait was the only way to lure Ludo. But he had not expected to be thrown off balance that easily.

‘So you didn’t recover Tal—Devere?’ Morse asked determinedly. 

‘Probably won’t. Currents. They’re still trying, though.’ This time, it was Pacella’s voice. A faint trace of pity coursed through his face.

Morse got up tiredly. ‘What now?’ ‘ _Matthew 8:22_ ,’ answered another part of his brain in a whisper. ‘ _Let the dead. The case is closed. Accept it._ ’

But this time, his question sounded less indignant and considerably less antagonistic. What was the use, after all? He had spent what looked like hours to unburden his mind, and it would be lost forever into the ether. Unused.

Thursday saw it and said gently, ‘Sleep.’

In the interval since Morse had had a proper look at him, his eyes had deepened in his sockets and his skin had taken a greyish colour. ‘ _He’s not a young man any more_ ,’ thought Morse, with some detached compassion. He nodded sharply.

‘Come back tomorrow, early afternoon,’ proposed Colativa. A suggestion that wasn’t really one. ‘Will two o’clock do? We’ll talk it over.’ He surveyed the DS with overt irony. ‘You won’t be searching for words so much, I expect.’

Morse felt himself flushing, which redoubled his annoyance.

‘Come, Morse,’ Thursday commanded in English. ‘High time for a kip. They’ll escort us home. Pacella, Bitte.’

‘Freddo,’ reciprocated Colativa.

Morse nodded his farewell to the Italian policemen and followed Thursday. A boat discharged them at the Gritti Palace, their escort staying politely behind.

Thursday scrutinized the façade up and down, but nothing in his expression betrayed what could only be said to be a pricey extravagance. ‘Nice place you found yourself.’

‘Oh, you know…’ Morse’s voice drifted away, and he looked at the brown brick and stone building as if he had never seen it before, his eyes tracing the shapes of the elongated Gothic arches of the front windows. On the empty quay, only a few tables chained against the walls were keeping them company.

‘A few last days in luxury before the end?’ Thursday goaded him. At the taunt, Morse recoiled, but Thursday went on. ‘Very novelistic, I’m sure. Like your letter. Still, it made Mrs. Thursday cry.’

He turned away. ‘Get some kip.’ At Morse’s faint rebellious glare, he paused and added gruffly, ‘You look like you've been dragged through a hedge backwards. No use to anyone.’ 

Thursday made an abrupt movement towards the boat. ‘I’ll be back at ten.’

Without another word, he warily got onboard, taking with him the sight of Morse’s whiteness and devastated look.

  


* * *

  


In the lobby, the attendant at the front desk shot Morse a bemused look as he handed him his key. But, surely, he had seen enough night owls in this job, thought the policeman grumpily. He took it, mumbled a snappy thank-you, and went into the lift, glad to rest his brow for a few seconds on the blessed coldness of the mirror.

Morse opened the door of his room, stripped out of his clothes, letting them fall haphazardly on the carpet, then climbed into the shower stall. He set the water on as hot as he could stand it and let it glide over his back and scalp.

And if he shed some tears, he was none the wiser, the salty drops being lost among the rivulets that coursed over his face.

  


* * *

  


In his much more modest hotel room provided by the Thames Valley Police, Thursday divested himself of his hat on the nearest table, carefully hung his coat, dropped heavily on the bed, and picked up the phone set on his nightstand. It was now 4 AM, but he knew that his wife would be glad of this wake-up call.

A few minutes later, different operators connected him to a sleepy familiar voice.

He heaved a great sigh. ‘Win? It’s alright, love. We’re both fine,’ he said, and didn’t wait for the relieved torrent of questions on the other side of the line to add, ‘Morse was right all along. Pegged them down right.’

  


* * *

  


There was a night and death, and there was a morning afterwards—and it was only the first day.

Their second day began even less auspiciously. In fact, it began on a late morning.

After some fitful turning and tossing, remembering what use he had made of this very same bed while Violetta shared it, Morse slept late. So late that he almost missed the breakfast provided in his luxurious accommodations. He nibbled on a toast, pushed his _fette biscottate_ on the side of his plate, and drank copious amounts of coffee. But the hot liquid couldn’t clear the cobwebs from his brain. He headed for the bar.

It was there that Thursday found him, a glass of scotch revolving disconsolately in his fingers, looking at the liquid slosh from one rim to the other.

‘Morse.’ Without any ado, Thursday plumped down in the plush armchair in front of him.

Morse’s eyes flicked between the DCI and his glass. ‘Sir.’ He relapsed into silence, then abruptly downed the remaining liquid in one gulp.

Seeing that Morse had no intention of initiating the conversation, Thursday forged on. ‘I called the nick. The Talenti’s photofits are being widely circulated. Their other names, too.’

‘What use now?’ 

‘Might solve other cases.’

‘Mmm,’ Morse nodded vaguely, and Thursday saw with increasing clarity that his scotch wasn’t the first. How many had he guzzled? He couldn’t even reprove him that. Technically, Morse wasn’t on the job.

‘Why?’

Thursday’s head snapped up. Bluntness was one of Morse’s less endearing characteristics, but he hadn’t expected such a naked question. He flung it back to him to gain some time. ‘Why what?’

‘Why did you come?’

‘Didn’t leave me the choice, did you? Dumped all your files on me.’

Their eyes locked, but Morse was the first to waver. He hung his head before turning it sharply away, his eyes searching instead for the waiter. A tiny jerk of his chin was enough to bring another glass, copiously filled, to the table, and a small dish of peanuts. Morse glared at the latter with overt disgust.

‘I’ll have a coffee,’ said Thursday as an afterthought to the departing waiter. ‘ _Un caffé all’americana_.’ The man was too well trained to express any surprise, and trotted back obediently to the bar.

The silence between both coppers lasted until the attendant had regained his place at the other side of the room. They were the only patrons at this hour, the guests having either gone to their daily pursuits or lingering yet in the breakfast room.

A faint chime sounded in ten successive strikes. Morse’s hand was trembling slightly as he raised the glass to his lips.

‘Why?’ he repeated.

Morse wasn’t half-pissed yet, but at the rate he was going, he would soon regret his last order, Thursday thought.

 _First things first_. When the half-filled glass of scotch came to rest upon the polished wood, Thursday promptly snatched it up and placed it on a neighbouring table. Morse raised quarrelsome eyes to him, but otherwise didn’t move an inch.

‘It stays there,’ said Thursday firmly. He cleared his throat, and began in a low voice: ‘Your letter reached us on December 26th. Forwarded.’ Up went his brows as he puzzled at an unexpected thought. ‘How did you get Joan’s address?’

A swift gesture of the hand, dismissing the inserted question as irrelevant, first took care of it; but, as Thursday’s lips remained closed in a tight line, Morse mumbled, ‘Welfare. Someone owed me.’ He slumped further inside his armchair, then half-heartedly tried to straighten himself, wishing that he could know what went on behind Thursday’s impassive face.

However, it gave up nothing as Thursday went on, ‘I informed Mr. Bright, then I called an old friend in Venice.’

Morse’s narrowed eyes regained a little of their acuity. ‘ _Vice Questore_ Colativa?’

A sharp nod. ‘I knew Giambattista Colativa during the war. Monte Cassino.’ Thursday’s lips twitched then went dead still. After a pause filled by memories so numerous that he couldn’t have expressed them even if he wished it, he added: ‘We kept in touch. Luck was, you gave the Police your hotel. Left the San Michele map behind, too. Convenient.’

The innuendo was so blatant that Morse could have spelt it backwards. 

_Had he truly left the map lying on purpose?_ Probably. But not for hope of any reinforcement. He was on his own and he knew it. Always was; always would. Instead, he had somehow meant to facilitate any search for him in case of… How had he phrased it? ‘ _Should I fall short and things end badly..._ ’

Instinctively, his hand groped along the table top and met only emptiness; his fingers extending vainly for the comforting touch of a glass vessel.

Thursday’s now-empty coffee cup sang a clear, high clang as the earthenware briskly met the saucer. ‘You hoped to put it right, didn’t you? A little too late.’

Morse cocked a brow in surprise. Everything he had needed to say was in the letter ostensibly addressed to Miss Thursday; actually, penned for her father.

But he could well tell Thursday all about it, after all! Ultimately, after those awkward days would pass—‘ _after the long hours of train travelling_ ,’ a more sober part of his brain susurrated in his ear—, Thursday would be nothing more than a stranger, the kind of chance-met stranger that one confided in when dead sure that those confidences would never come back to haunt one.

Even more so, Morse would be a ‘former colleague’ to Thursday. One not that fondly remembered—as his tone had made obvious when he had mentioned him to DCI Box, a few years ago.

No, nothing Morse would say now would change Thursday’s opinion of him.

 _Strange how the man’s good opinion had mattered so much, not so long ago! He had really been that green…_ But he had outgrown that need, now. _And to think that his former Governor might have been his father-in-law, if Miss Thursday had accepted his proposal!_

Thursday’s head jerked upward and his gaze focused with an additional scowl upon Morse. 

‘What?’ came unbidden from the DCI’s lips.

Morse’s brow furrowed further, with uncertainty, this time. Had his musings spilled over?

‘N’thing,’ he mumbled, adding, ‘Water under…’ He reached out for his exiled glass, rescued it from its solitary deportation on the adjacent table, and sought comfort in it. It was half-empty, and he remedied it by draining it in one go. Emptiness was the order of the day.

As he shifted in his seat, preparing to hail the barman for another refill, Thursday’s hand stopped his half-raised arm’s momentum. A puzzled frown replaced the one concentration had etched on Morse’s brow, and he turned eyes lined with red to the older man.

‘Why not?’

‘Enough for today. No livener, that.’

‘Not enough.’

‘Liquid breakfast?’ insisted Thursday.

‘As a matter of fact, yes.’ At Thursday’s severe frown, Morse explained. ‘Coffee.’

Still, the Old Man looked pointedly at the glass Morse still held. 

At that glare, Morse’s blood boiled. He felt the vibration caused by the glass meeting the table top course along his fingers as he leaned forward, angry eyes boring into the DCI’s.

‘If not for my “flighty piece,” the Talentis would still be running, scot-free. Unwittingly, she offered me the missing link on a platter.’

The reminder acted like a douse over Thursday’s reciprocating anger. In a mellowing voice, he proffered, as a peace offering: ‘Not your fault your mate was a bad apple.’

‘Never my mate. But my responsibility if we couldn’t pin it on them sooner.’ 

Morse’s voice was definitely slurred, noticed Thursday, as the latter began his tale. Not very blatantly yet, but he might have downed enough on a nearly empty stomach and a sleepless night to loosen a few screws. Thicker, northern stresses fought with intoxicated blurriness, and no one would now believe that the presently grating voice would be able to soar in any kind of singing.

Thursday kept silent, fearing that any kind of intervention, be it nods or sounds of approval would derail Morse’s confession—for confession it was. He couldn’t label it overwise.

Frequently searching for synonyms that would avoid any semblance of emotional involvement, Morse began again to retell the concatenation of circumstances. 

_Third time lucky_. The saying went through his mind in a flash, and his jaw tightened. _The third time in two days and a night he rehashed the actions that had brought him here: musings to himself, a statement poured into Pacella’s professional ears, and now, another one for this copper who would scribble it down on the slate of his mind and never erase it again_. Pacella may have torn out his notebook pages, but Thursday would keep Morse’s confidences, mull over them, and not forget a line.

Still, it was easier than Morse expected. Strings of words glided out, bonding into sentences; merely impeded by the search for an unemotional term. Little by little, they gained more speed, as caution was brushed aside by an impatience to end it all. 

Punctuating the words, Morse’s fingers began a staccato dance on the table, each tap unconsciously underlining the major points of his narrative: his first meeting at La Fenice with a glamorous Lady of Mystery; her pillow talks bordering on confession—that lowering of intimate barriers that had given him the last straw he could grasp to recover the Talentis—; his appalment, months later, at finding out she was Ludo’s wife; her promises to leave her husband; his idiotic belief that ‘the heart decided.’

At this point, Morse scoffed, and bitterness punctured even the alcoholic haze he had wrapped himself into.

In a gesture more revealing than all the words which had tumbled out, he closed his eyes. Thursday saw the sudden spreading out of tiny wrinkles and crow’s feet he had never noticed before on Morse’s skin, and something akin to pity stabbed him, following the uttering of the harsh sound.

But Morse was still speaking, carried by his momentum. ‘I can’t believe that Talenti planned it all. Not since Venice… No!’ 

His denial exploded like a hand grenade and, from the corner of his eyes, Thursday saw that the barman was casting worried eyes in their direction. He shook his head slightly, and the man slouched again against the counter.

‘No!’ repeated Morse with desperate intensity. ‘He couldn’t.’ And, from the depth of his anguish, he added, grasping at straws he feared would disintegrate under his touch, ‘Ludo resented me afterwards, so he—’ 

For an instant, Morse’s face crumbled and his eyes filled with something so bleak that Thursday felt like he was trespassing. His eyes wandered on the farthest wall, and he saw that the hands of the clock now broadcasted twenty past eleven. It had taken this long to make Morse spill it. ‘ _Only because he’s off his tits_ ,’ Thursday thought, ‘ _not because he trusts me. God knows I haven’t given him reasons to, lately_.’

His self-criticism went no farther, as the younger man said haltingly, ‘The day you saw us—by the towpath, she asked me to save her. She told me he would kill her. I thought Violetta was—’ He shook his head deprecatingly. ‘Lots of good it did her. I told her I couldn’t save her.’ His voice broke. ‘I was right. She also was. No one could.’ Morse’s eyes held an almost beseeching glint as he bore into Thursday’s. ‘We weren’t—then. We resumed it the day after.’

Now was the moment or never, Thursday knew. He had never wavered at aiming for the kill when his opponent had lowered his guard. But this, he kept for the various scums he had been battling all his life. Hitting Morse below the belt wasn’t his idea of a good deed, but it would have to be done.

 _He_ had _to know_.

Mr. Bright would ask, and so would McNutt when they’d be back in Oxford. And even if Bitte would make sure that most of Morse’s implication and his stepping over the line would be conveniently forgotten, he, Fred Thursday, had to know what laid at the bottom of this cesspit.

‘You were at College with Talenti?’ he said, as he couldn’t ask the ‘ _Did you trust him?_ ’ that was burning his lips.

Morse shook his head, glad to unburden himself in one lump. ‘I couldn’t remember him, actually. But he knew—’ _He knew all my weaknesses_ , he wanted to say.

 _Weaknesses Ludo could have easily found out in the archives of the Oxford Mail_. His passion for opera—the infamous ‘Singing Detective’ headline. His past—it had excited the interest of pen-pushers enough, after the Blenheim Vale Affair. Enough ‘ _to catch the conscious of the King_.’ But he had been no king or princeling, merely Rosencrantz—unless he was the equally unfortunate Guildenstern.

Morse’s voice drifted; he was silent for a while, then he picked up his answer without uttering the damning word. ‘—so I believed Ludo,’ he continued, his voice hoarse. ‘And then, I went on with it.’

 _He had believed Ludo because he wanted to. So much. He had been that lonely_.

 _And when Violetta had appeared, he had believed still because he couldn’t bear to let her go_.

 _Hoping they could build something together_.

 _But no one could redeem Violetta. Despite her supposedly genuine contrition. No one. She was right about that, too_. 

‘You were right,’ burst into Morse’s thoughts, superimposing itself with his thought so the words felt evanescent at first. He pinched the bridge of his nose, but it didn’t make the sentence disappear.

Seeing Morse’s incredulous look, Thursday repeated: ‘You were right, Morse.’

The sentence had an extraordinary effect upon the bowed shoulders. Morse straightened up, and with a flash of his old arrogance, said with quiet deliberation: ‘Took you long enough to say it.’

All Thursday’s goodwill crumbled in a second. ‘I was right about Sturgis,’ he growled.

That unpalatable truth didn’t derail Morse one bit. In the same conceited tone, he conceded, ‘You were. But not because you pierced all.’

Thursday’s closed fist came crashing on the table top. His coffee cup overturned, and so did Morse’s glass. Residual drops of coffee stained the table, dark against the lighter mahogany wood.

Fighting the ensuing silence with sudden haste, Morse said, in a low voice: ‘Sorry, sir. I had no right to say that. Especially after…’

‘No, you didn’t. You solved enough cases by following your guts. Too many, perhaps.’ 

Thursday inhaled deeply, and, words issuing in haste as if he would never say them if they weren’t, he added, ‘Mr. Bright saw that most of your expenses will be covered. Up to the usual fare at least.’ His gaze surveyed the paintings on the wall and the beautiful furniture. ‘As to your train fare, it will be reimbursed. Got your return ticket?’

Morse shook his head mutely, and Thursday refrained another, deeper sigh. _Of course, the fool hadn’t. Probably thought he wouldn’t head back home_. 

‘Well, then,’ he went on, ‘we have an appointment with Colativa at two o’clock. Till then…’ Thursday cast a quick look at the clock. It was now five past twelve. ‘Time enough to find a _bàcaro_ where we’ll put some food into you.’

He got up, and after a few seconds spent wavering, Morse also did.

‘Oh, and Mr. Bright called McNutt. Told him you’ve been delayed. Thought you’d be interested.’

Morse’s only answer was a tightening of his lips, and a tug upon his ear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may find pictures of the Gritti Palace [here](https://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g187870-d230427-Reviews-The_Gritti_Palace_a_Luxury_Collection_Hotel-Venice_Veneto.html#/media/230427/319208676:p/?albumid=101&type=0&category=101). I have no idea if it already was used as a hotel in the early 1970’s.  
>   
> What did you think of Morse and Thursday’s heart to heart? Please, let me know! All comments are welcome.


	3. The Living

Finally, food was a useful commodity. While Morse was picking at it, looking balefully at the plates of _ciccheti_ set before him, Thursday finished his white wine. He had taken good care that one glass would be all Morse would have to drink, offering him the choice between fried sardines and fried vegetables, or an assortment of _baccalà_ (fried salt cod) and stuffed olives.

But he was damned if he would let Morse take a _giro de ombre_ , a drinking tour, from _bàcaro_ to _bàcaro_. 

First, he needed his former bagman as sober as could be for the incoming appointment with Colativa.

Second, he wasn’t sure if they would qualify as ‘drinking chums’ anymore since Morse had grown into a conceited ingrate not mincing his words about Thursday’s coppering.

Thursday stole a glance at the younger man. His hand was now hovering over one of the dishes, as if wondering if it would make a go at the appetizing food. Finally, after pondering it for far too long, considering the enticing smells that drifted from the plates, Morse warily picked up an olive and began to munch it. Then a second, and a third, his face betraying his enjoyment of the food.

Wordlessly, Thursday gestured, ordering two of the same, as Morse chewed on even more enthusiastically. He didn’t lick his fingers, but he’d probably have if he had been on his own. Still, when he glanced at his now empty glass, Thursday was quick to order a bottle of sparkling water. 

When he judged that Morse had eaten enough to counteract the effect of his booze, he glanced at his watch and got to his feet. ‘Time to go,’ he said with a voice that brooked no opposition.

Morse followed suit, noticing that Thursday carefully counted the change and folded the bill in his wallet.

‘Accounting will need it,’ Thursday mumbled. At Morse’s sudden look of understanding, he added, ‘Yours is also taken care of. Mr. Bright’s order.’

They walked silently through the city; not very companionably, often treading one behind the other in the narrow alleyways. After a while, close brick walls stained with damp were replaced by smooth exterior plaster in ochre, dark yellow or dark rose. The alleyways got wider and the pavement smoother, as if thousands of soles had polished it with their passing. They could even walk side by side. Still, they kept silent, their eyes purposely running over the walls and the few passer-byes that came their way. Baroque portals beckoned with the allurements of pillars topped with the mock rigor of Baroque turbulence, leading into churches or palaces whose treasures were hidden by sober façades; still, they equally disdained them, passing them by with a mere glance.

‘ _And thus they creep, crouching and crab-like, through the sapping streets_ ,’ Morse murmured, and Thursday looked at him with astonishment.

Despite the cold, they weren’t the only ones going in the same direction. More people came their way, Italian families chatting together, and a few tourists seemingly lost in this maze, puzzling over their maps. Thursday and Morse went across a few more streets, and suddenly, the Piazza San Marco was before them. 

For a second, Thursday’s face expressed his wonder as space seemed to open before them, while Morse’s merely hardened further. Involuntarily, his steps checked.

He had crossed the famous square no later than a few days before, during his lonely wanderings in the City while he was killing time before going to the Fenice. 

But, for all his meanderings, his quest had been unsuccessful. If, in a subconscious urge, he had wanted to surround himself with beauty, he had found nothing but decay.

Like the Fenice, Piazza San Marco didn’t hold him in its thrall anymore. Its pull was fading fast, the beauty of the place being like a Carnival mask hiding pockmarks and leprosy, the freshness of the architecture submerged by an encompassing decline. It was as if the City, this astounding open-air museum, was turning into a heap of fakes, of cheap baubles especially made up for gullible tourists. Even the fake Pieter Claesz painting that Bixby had flaunted so proudly seemed now to have more substance. And, as this still life painting had stated in all its masterful make-believe, _Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas_.

All Morse’s moves had spelled vanity in its myriad shapes.

Vanity, his going to the Fenice before the fated day, half-expecting to meet Violetta sitting meekly among the audience, nights before her self-appointed rendezvous with her father’s ghost. 

Thus, Morse had spent tense evenings among the gods, half-listening to _La Sposa del Demonio_ , then growing increasingly aware of his unconcerned listening to the key moments of the score, or intently searching through the faces of the audience during the interval.

Vanity, his trying to reconquer the awe he had first felt when going through the museums, the churches—not the 139 of them, but enough to be dazzled by frescoes and cupolas and sculpted, gilded Baroque altars—; and at this number, his mind froze for a second, remembering what had followed their banter. 

And, as if eager to show him how truly despicable things were, a moth-eaten mental veil had dropped between his sight and the marvels of Venice, obstructing his enjoyment of the centuries-old splendours. An almost-slimy, muddy smell now clung to the remnants of the City’s glory, to its monuments—now empty shells of what they once meant to the masters of the Mediterranean Sea who had built them as testimony of their power.

Even the Venetian sunsets seemed darker now, their usual colours washed-out—the sinking of the sun, an endless fall that would never allow the re-emergence of light; the ripples on the Laguna or the Canal Grande, mere flickers that couldn’t inspire any painters except amateurs. As if the City didn’t attune itself to the sun in glorious roses and pinks and yellows and misty shadows.

Not anymore.

It was a decoy, a theatrical backdrop, where light could not really sizzle—just ricochet for a while.

Morse had found nothing here. Nothing except agony and rottenness.

Unless he was his own disease, and brought the darkness with him always.

He might have frozen for a fraction of a second too long on the edge of the Piazza, because Thursday suddenly stopped his progress, and looked back at him so swiftly that Morse didn’t have the time to rearrange his face.

What Thursday perceived he didn’t comment on, but he waited with less impatience than he should have had, until Morse resumed walking.

‘This way,’ he merely commented.

And Morse let himself be led again like a puppet on a string to the Police headquarters, so numb that he didn’t even question how Thursday found his way inside the confusion of the streets without a map or having to ask for directions.

  


* * *

  


Full daylight didn’t mitigate the tear and wear of the Police headquarters. The policeman sitting behind the front desk had a more alert glint in his eyes, but it subsided into wary boredom as soon as Thursday gave his name. The British coppers were soon escorted towards Colativa’s office.

The latter jumped to his feet when they came in. ‘ _Bondì_! Come in, come in,’ he went on in English, after his first salutation in the Friulan language.

The British coppers reciprocated the greeting, Thursday seizing Colativa’s hand in a firm handshake.

Morse’s brows furrowed. Colativa’s accent was strong, but he seemed fluent enough in English. His speaking only Italian the night before must have been a way to unbalance him further.

To conceal this sudden understanding, he ran his eyes over the furniture, gathering what info he could about the _Vice Questore_ , while his elders exchanged a few additional words of greetings. He’d probably need all his wits about him.

The office was quite the same as Mr. Bright’s, Morse noticed. Meticulously ordered, not a thing out of place, giving the lie to the Italian reputation for sloppiness—but weren’t supposed national characteristics usually made up from prejudice and stupidity from people who should know better? 

Files were heaped in rigid stacks, corners maniacally aligned. Reference books—Law and registrations—and file boxes lining the shelves behind the desk added a touch of darker colours to the sober greys and browns prominent in the room. On Colativa’s desk, the only oddity, a Tanagra statuette of a graceful woman seated on a stool, her pleated _palla_ falling in soft folds over her knees, was the only contrasting shade, as the pale rose of the clay seemed to attract most of the light in the room.

Colativa caught Morse’s glance and said dismissively, ‘A copy, of course.’ He chuckled. ‘A fake, I should rather say. One of our latest catches. Peddling counterfeited antiquities seems a national pastime among criminals.’

He gestured to the seats arranged in front of his desk. Morse and Thursday sat down.

‘Devere’s body hasn’t been found,’ he announced straight away. Seeing Morse’s wince, he said: ‘Probably won’t. Borne away by the currents, possibly.’

‘So I was told,’ Morse said. His forehead creased as he elaborated, ‘A brother from San Michele warned me of that possibility. Still, it’s unfortunate.’

A corner of Colativa’s mouth quirked up. ‘Life isn’t a James Bond film, Sergeant Morse. People don’t rise from the dead, screaming for revenge. Drowned people stay dead, even if we don’t fish them out. We probably won’t. Not at this time of year, and not in that part of the _Laguna_.’

‘Talenti might have planned another way of escape: he was thorough in his plans,’ Morse insisted. ‘He might have missed the last boat.’

‘He wouldn’t have,’ Thursday butted in. ‘Time enough to bump you off and scram.’ ‘ _If not for me_ ,’ although unsaid, hovered loudly in the room.

Morse’s eyes flashed in dumbfounded anger. _Did Thursday have to squeeze so hard where it was sore?_

It hadn’t escaped his notice that he owed his life to the DCI’s prompt action. Another second, and Talenti would have pressed the trigger again, and this time… This time, Violetta’s body wouldn’t have shielded him from the bullet.

Fortunately, Colativa intervened before Morse’s resentment got the upper hand. ‘Talenti might have planned something: the operator of the last Vaporetto reported seeing a small boat moored near the portal in _Recinto_ VII, but it is impassable. Locked-up, you know. The main exit is the one you used, near the Church.’ He paused, then added, as in an afterthought. ‘There was no boat around when the Police arrived.’

Morse slanted his head, and his palm went to cup his cheek. His face took an absorbed, faraway look.

Thursday glanced at him and frowned. ‘Don’t go imagining things, Morse! Talenti never reached that boat, if he ever planned to.’

‘How did he fall into the water, sir? You never told me.’

‘We reached the—’ Thursday’s brow puckered in indecision.

‘— _Ossario Comune_ ,’ supplied Colativa.

‘—and Talenti managed to climb over the outer wall. While he was kneeling on it, I returned fire. I saw him fall in the water, through the cast iron gate. I fired again. He cursed. He didn’t reappear.’

Judging from the look on his face, Morse didn’t look convinced. Thursday’s irritation reached a new high. ‘What else do you want, Morse?’ 

Being alive wasn’t enough, it seemed. It never was, with Morse. He had to have answers. ‘ _Even bloody answers nobody wants_ ,’ he thought with growing aggravation.

‘Something definite. Clear-cut. Not an eventual way out for a con man and murderer wearing different faces.’

‘Well, you won’t get it.’

‘Gut feeling, sir? Like with the towpath murders?’

Thursday’s fists closed by his side and he inhaled heavily. The sound resounded loudly in the room, and again, Colativa hastened to speak. ‘The case isn’t closed yet; Devere’s body might still come up. Sometimes, they do.’ His tone didn’t hold much hope of it being washed up the shore or picked up by a stray boat.

Tension crept up again along Morse’s spine. Try as he might, he couldn’t master the slight shiver that accompanied his knotted muscles, as if someone had walked on his grave.

‘ _Bene_ ,’ Colativa said. ‘Here is what we gathered about Devere.’ His eyes fell on a bulky file lying on his desk. ‘We spent the remaining of the night requesting the files from all over Italy. The cases were notorious enough, so they found them easily. Some were faxed from Naples and Palermo.’

He beamed, making it sound like a huge favour, and Thursday issued a grunt of gratitude.

Colativa opened the folder, and various photographs caught Morse’s and Thursday’s eyes at once. They were blurred, but in all of them they could see Ludo Talenti’s silhouette as he stood in the corner of various social gatherings, speaking animatedly with Beautiful People: a few politicians, socialites, actors and a few millionaires who had graced the Celebrity pages just because they were rich as well as famous for their elite parties.

However, in every one of the photographs, Ludo Talenti gave the feeling he had ducked behind another, turned his head away or raised his glass in a toast at the most opportune moment, so all the likeness that the photographer had caught on film was a toothpaste poster toothy grin, and the shape of cheekbones turning away—obscured or not by a beard. Talenti-Devere might not have achieved to escape complete scrutiny, but he had made his utmost to make identification difficult.

‘When was that?’ said Morse. 

He fingered a photograph and flipped it over. The date written on the reverse might have been what he was looking for, because he set it back on the desk.

‘Called himself Hugo Devere then,’ Colativa explained. ‘Those were taken in Palermo last year. This woman—’ and his finger pointed to a middle-aged woman whose abundant jewels made her look like a glittering Christmas tree, ‘—she’s the one who bought a Duccio predella from him. Family heirloom, Devere said. Commissioned from Duccio himself. Painted not a year before, a curator found out.’

In the photograph Morse had placed face up on the desk, Talenti-Devere was standing close to Steve McQueen, one arm thrown carelessly around his shoulders and his head turned away as he said something in the actor’s ear, while the latter squinted at the photographer, his face whitened out by the flashbulb. Talenti’s jerky movement had been an effective disguise: his face was hidden as effectively as if he were wearing a mask, but his silhouette and the garish reddish shirt were unmistakeable.

‘ _At least, he hadn’t lied on that point_ ,’ Morse thought. ‘ _He did meet “Steve”_.’

He slowly browsed through the photographs. None of them featured Violetta Talenti.

Colativa’s voice was reaching Morse from afar as he tried to find something in those snapshots that might give him a clue. ‘Weird that he needed to go on with it. From what we gathered, he had plenty of money. Could have retired and enjoyed it. But no, he had to keep conning people. Enjoyed it, probably.’

‘What about the woman?’ asked Thursday brusquely, as he ceased to riffle through the photographs, and Morse was grateful that he had; he wasn’t sure he could have kept his voice firm if he had.

Colativa shook his head. ‘Nothing. No Police file on record. She never went to those parties. Some prominent… victims were interviewed this morning, and they never even knew Devere was married.’ He cast a quick glance at Morse. ‘Or appeared to be.’

Thursday’s eyes studiously avoided Morse’s scowl; a move which gave the latter no small scrap of satisfaction. At least, he was slightly vindicated for the hanky-panky his Governor had found so distasteful. Violetta might have been the proverbial fallen woman, but at least the smear of adultery was scrapped off him, albeit reluctantly.

_As if it made things any better!_

_He had once thought that affairs with married women weren’t ‘his scene._ ’ 

_He had been wrong._

_Desire had overcome Reason. And the—alleged—cuckolded husband being a friend had made no difference to his moral compass_. 

Violetta’s actual marital status might mitigate it in the end, but, in Thursday’s eyes, Morse had nonetheless crossed the line.

_A bit rich, after years of being in the front row to witness Thursday’s idea of coppering! Not to forget his sidling with the likes of Box and Jago!_

Morse snorted. 

The incongruous sound deepened Thursday’s frown, as Morse crossed his arms before him defensively. 

‘Nothing on Violetta? Nothing at all?’ he couldn’t help insisting.

‘None. He could have manipulated her, except for the things she avowed doing,’ Colativa ventured.

‘Hardly.’ Morse’s voice was acerbic. ‘Fineries and fripperies were essential to her. She couldn’t do without them.’

Both Police inspectors exchanged a knowing look. Without heeding them, Morse went on, ‘And she was scared. Caught in Talenti’s net, and, in the end, murderer and victim alike.’

An unwelcome memory flitted through his mind: Isla Fairford, and her so sweet, seemingly open confidences. 

Murderesses. Victims of foul play. Murdered women. Women committing suicide. _Was he fated to be attracted to women who checked any of these boxes?_

Morse shook the inopportune thought with a wary shrug, trying to focus on the case at hand. ‘What else did you find?’

‘Naples is a good lead. Quite interesting. We’ll look into that. Just for closure, you know. There might be some cold cases needing a full stop,’ Colativa explained. ‘We’ll look into the woman’s past, too, but it’s probably a dead end. After the war, it was easier to disappear and forge new identities.’

‘What about the signature “ _F. De Vere_ ”?’ Morse asked. He had the dizzying feeling that he was speaking out into an echo chamber, his words falling into a resonant void. ‘It could well be another alias for Hugo Devere. And don’t you find the use of the Lion of Saint Mark on the _California Amity Redemption and Rembursement_ letterhead paper significant? There might be loose ends in Venice.’

Colativa’s eyes pierced the younger detective, as if he wanted to see through him. ‘Leave it to us. We’ll take care of that. My friend Freddo will pursue a few ends in Oxford, and between the both of us, we’ll make sure that no one else is still interested in… collecting earlier what should be left to fate. There will be no more untimely deaths.’ 

His tone was final, and Morse understood that he would probably never know about all the latter ramifications. He had been taken off the case. Permanently.

‘I see,’ he said slowly.

During all this exchange, Thursday had said nothing, looking alternatively at his old war mate and at his former bagman.

‘Morse isn’t a yes-man, you see,’ he told Colativa pointedly. ‘You’ll have to give a little in the end.’

This memento of one of their last conversations brought a patch of red on Morse’s cheekbones.

‘Sir, all I need to know is if I was—If I allowed Talenti…’ Guilt mingled with vehemence made his voice strangle.

‘If that’s troubling you, my young friend, it’s easy to relieve your mind. You are no accessory before or after the facts. Just guilty of… shall we say, carelessness. A good lesson learned, eh?’ Colativa’s gaze didn’t flinch and Morse lowered his eyes, hating himself for it. ‘You’re a lucky man. I’m sure they’ll be willing to overlook your blunder, considering that you led us to the criminals.’

As a matter of fact, Morse would bet his last opera record that he would strongly recommend leniency. Backed by Thursday, if the stern expression on the DCI’s face was any clue. 

But neither man would do so with any lightness of heart. All the more since they were gazing at him with something like pity and maybe also something akin to scorn.

‘ _Somewhat brilliant but sorely lacking_.’ Morse could almost hear Thursday’s voice in his head. Would he tell it to McNutt?

It prompted his next outburst. ‘That’s it, then? Swept under the carpet?’

‘Trust me, you wouldn’t like the alternative,’ reproved Colativa softly, the veiled threat obvious.

There would be no help coming from Thursday, Morse saw. Outwardly relaxed, his stance made nonetheless obvious that he would condone this official way out. And after all, why wouldn’t he? Thursday had found arrangements with the Law before.

Suddenly, disgust swept over Morse like a wave. He flung his head back, eyes flashing. ‘If that makes it alright, then!’

Thursday’s expression closed. ‘Mustn’t grumble. You got off lightly, and you know it! Don’t push your luck too far.’

The snarl on Morse’s face could have been a younger imprint of his former Governor; then he turned away, focusing instead on the little Roman maiden seated in her manufactured majesty. The face moulded in clay returned his incensed look with an immoveable half-smile.

Morse let out a harsh breath, then nodded curtly. He knew when he was staring at Defeat in the face. 

All the words exchanged in Colativa’s office could only be anticlimactic after that. Afterwards, Morse couldn’t really recall them; only remember vaguely that it had to do with their return journey.

Yet, just before he left the office, Morse turned back to face the _Vice Questore_. ‘What about her?’

‘Her?’

Morse’s throat was so tight he was afraid that the words wouldn’t go through. ‘Signora Talenti. What will happen to her—?’ He couldn’t bring himself to say it, still, with another push, his vocal cords expelled the sentence. ‘Where will she be buried?’

‘Buried?’ From Colativa’s tone, the thought was ludicrous.

Because he couldn’t even contemplate to imagine her white figure laid out on a slab for medical students to ogle, Morse burst out: ‘Where? How?’ He swallowed hard, and said, berating himself for this foolishness: ‘Are there free plots at San Michele? I can—’

‘Ah, I see,’ Colativa replied, his tone neutral. ‘It could be arranged, yes. I’ll let you know.’ His eyes softened for a second. ‘It can be arranged.’

Thursday cleared his throat. Morse cast a look at him, expecting to find sarcasm in his eyes. He found nothing of the sort. At least, nothing he could easily qualify. Thus, he let silence grow and cloak all words until they were meaningless, even the goodbyes that had to be uttered as they were the only thing left to do.

Morse left the office, shoulders slumped, while Thursday lingered, exchanging a few softly spoken sentences with Colativa.

Unbeknownst to Morse, Colativa whispered a few words in reply, and Thursday patted his arm. ‘I know, I know. Good head on his shoulders, Morse, but I won’t leave him out of my sight. Thank you, Bitte. I owe you one.’

‘No, Freddo. We’re even. I wouldn’t be here if not for you.’

Memories of a time when lives meant nothing much passed between the two men.

Hastening his steps, Thursday caught up with his subordinate in the lobby. He shoved an envelope in his pocket. ‘ _Vice Questore_ Colativa arranged for our return tickets. Train leaves at half past seven. Time enough to pack our gear.’

  


* * *

  


Their train schedule left them the latter part of the afternoon to explore Venice if they so wished.

Morse cast a quick look at Thursday. The man seemed pensive, almost ill at ease, fidgeting a few steps away from the Police Station.

‘ _As he should_ ,’ Morse thought ferociously. Hadn’t Thursday robbed him of his very last investigation at Castle Gate?

After another sneaking glance, the certainty that the Old Man wasn’t so ready to leave him on his own couldn’t be shaken, so Morse merely ventured, ‘Don’t you want to bring back a little souvenir to Mrs. Thursday?’

Thursday nodded. ‘Planned to. Wasn’t a very happy bunny when I had to bail out on the 30th. Neither was Joan.’

Morse’s face went blank. ‘Miss Thursday was there? I thought she’d be there only for Christmas.’

Thursday’s eyebrows raised a little, clearly thinking about the letter Morse had sent to his daughter. ‘Got a leave for New Year’s Eve.’ He sighed. ‘Well, I’ll get them something nice.’ 

‘If you care for it, I know a place,’ Morse offered. ‘They sell lovely Murano glasswork and other trinkets. I bought an ashtray gondola last time I was there. It’s a little out of the way; not many tourists know of it, I’m sure.’

Thursday nodded. It would save time, and indulging Morse with that might not be counterproductive. Besides, Morse’s fastidious taste might be useful for once.

They went to the shop in silence, neither willing to test the strength of their fragile truce.

The small shop was indeed full of lovely pieces. The seller, an elderly woman inclined to be chatty if one allowed her, displayed beautiful small figurines and vases, tiny fragrance bottles with elaborate stoppers shaped like flames, even a few jewellery items: earrings, necklaces, even rings made of filigreed and millefiori glass. But it was on a silver and black photograph frame, then on an iridescent pendant shaped like a drop, that Thursday set his choice.

‘Joan will like it,’ he considered aloud.

When they left the shop, Morse slipped a little bundle into Thursday’s hands. ‘For Mrs. Thursday, with my regards.’

Thursday considered the parcel and grunted in approval, accepting the tacit apology directed at him for shattering their family circle. ‘She’ll be glad.’

‘The little horse with the flowing mane,’ Morse explained, and that was enough for Thursday to understand that his dithering hadn’t escaped Morse’s scrutiny.

  


* * *

  


Morse’s belongings were packed in the wink of an eye. When it was done, he sat on the bed and cast a last look around.

The pier mirror reflected engravings of Roman vessels etched by Piranesi as well as replicas of Canaletto paintings back at him. In the silver surface, his own face, drawn and pale, seemed to mock the hours he had spent in this same room, flushed with pleasure and feeling absurdly smug. How far away the previous year seemed now!

A gesture of anger escaped him, his hand slashing the empty air as if he could lacerate obstinate reminiscences.

According to Virgil, ‘ _carmina vel caelo possunt deducere lunam_ —spells, for instance, are able to draw down the moon from heaven’—but Morse had summoned no ghostly spirit to cross the threshold of his room. 

No necromancer was needed to evoke a slim shape, ebony hair and red lips. Violetta’s pale wraith hovered in his mind, tempting him, deriding him, her thin arms wrapping themselves playfully around his ribs.

Her gesture was so vividly recalled that he almost felt her weight pressing on his back and the trail of her lips on his shoulder. Morse closed his eyes, leaning into the bittersweet memory one last time, then he picked up the phone.

He asked the operator to connect him to the San Michele monastery. A few hesitant queries and some interlocutors later, he heard the voice he was waiting for in the receiver.

‘ _Pronto!_ ’

‘ _Fratello_ Anselmo?’

His accent must have betrayed him, as the Franciscan brother immediately said, ‘Sergeant Morse?’

‘Himself. Brother, I’m leaving Venice soon, and—’ 

Morse hesitated, and the Italian breached easily: ‘If you wished to thank me, my assistance didn’t deserve any gratitude.’

‘It wasn’t a courtesy call,’ Morse said, and, at the other end of the line, _Fratello_ Anselmo swallowed a smile at this refreshing honesty. ‘I needed to ask you a question.’

‘About the murder? I fear I saw no evidence that might help you.’

‘No, not about that.’ A corner of Morse’s mouth twisted, but he forged on. ‘How did you know—I mean… How did you know you choose the right path?’

‘Ah! My personal road to Damascus?’ A tiny smile came and went on the Franciscan’s mouth, but it would have taken a sharper ear than Morse’s to hear it. ‘The sixth _Étude d'exécution transcendante_ was my undoing. God moves in mysterious ways.’

‘“ _Vision_ ”? Aptly named, then,’ Morse said after a short pause. ‘You mistook me, brother. I wasn’t speaking about religious matters. I don’t blame things on God or the devil, although some people seem to be wicked for the sake of it. I spoke of choice and of duty.’

‘Isn’t it the same thing, sometimes? Duty to yourself? And to others?’ Suddenly, there was kindly compassion in the voice filtered by the phone. ‘As a policeman, you’re used to walking the line, surely? What’s troubling you, my son?’

‘That I might have made things far worse by trying to mend them.’

‘Were your intentions pure?’

‘Hardly. Hubris, rather. Too much faith in my abilities.’

‘Then it will help you to better yourself. No failure is ever absolute. There is always a way to balance one’s mistakes. With saving grace, sometimes.’

‘God again?’ Remembering who he was talking to, Morse barely refrained from snorting.

This time, the smile was blatant in _Fratello_ Anselmo’s voice as he replied: ‘What else did you expect from a Franciscan brother?’

‘Prayers, maybe.’ Before the silence at the other end of the line could morph into open puzzlement, Morse hastened to counter: ‘But not for me. For the woman who was killed. She might have wished for them.’ 

There was nothing else in his ear than Brother Anselmo’s soft breathing.

Morse clarified, not so irrelevantly: ‘She once wanted to know if I’d forgive her. I can’t. I’m not very good at forgiveness.’

‘And you wish me to take it upon myself?’ There was another pregnant pause. ‘I’ll pray that she’ll be forgiven. If not by you, by Someone else.’

‘Then, Brother, could you get in touch with _Vice Questore_ Giambattista Colativa? He’s to arrange for her burial.’

‘I will.’ Another pause. ‘And I will pray for you, too. Godspeed, Sergeant Morse.’

Without waiting for an answer, Brother Anselmo hung up, leaving an astonished Morse at the other end place the receiver carefully back on its hook.

‘ _An eye for an eye_ ,’ specified Leviticus. However, sparing his life didn’t balance out the ‘freak accidents’ victims’ demises. These were recorded on another list in the accounting ledger.

All Morse could do to repay Violetta’s last gift to him was this empty gesture that she would have gladly accepted. Anyway, the dead woman would be buried according to her traditional rites. 

He could do nothing else. She couldn’t benefit anymore from the 24 hours he had given her; he had given her eternity, if one believed in that—an infinity of nothingness, if one didn’t. The same emptiness he was staring at.

With time, he would hopefully take her out of his mind, push her memory aside for more earthly concerns. Her ghost wouldn’t come dancing, weaving circles around his slumber.

But his gullibility burned him still. It would, for a very long time. 

So would the names of those he couldn’t save.

He would not reach out again so easily, from now on, he swore to himself.

Morse raked his shaking hands in his hair, then stretched his neck, heaving a great, unintentional sigh. The mechanical gestures unwound a knot inside his chest, and a flimsy sense of peace unexpectedly went over him. Probably the slow thawing of tenacious guilt. He hadn’t sought for this reprieve when he had called, but he welcomed it nonetheless. 

Without his knowledge, tentative healing had begun.

  


* * *

  


If Morse ever hoped that he had mended some bridges with Thursday, their joint journey back would have disillusioned him on this account.

Thursday spent most of the trip with his nose buried in files he didn’t really read.

Morse tried half-heartedly to do the same, but finally flung his book away with a sigh. Fortunately, the train compartment filled up after Vincenza, preventing all attempts to conversation between them. Morse resorted to dozing, an always useful expedient to prevent any awkward interaction.

At Dijon, the neighbouring seats were taken with a mother with her three girls, the children fidgeting and trying as unobtrusively as they could to have peeks through the window on Morse’s side. He gratefully gave up his seat to the youngest, earning him the gratitude of the woman and some distance from Thursday. At least, he wouldn’t have to see the DCI’s stern face and hooded eyes, each time he raised his eyes from a page he hadn’t turned for more than an hour.

Both men went through the motions from commuting to commuting, and split up with barely concealed relief at the Oxford train station.

‘Four o’clock sharp,’ Thursday reminded Morse as the latter got into a taxi.

  


* * *

  


Entering the Castle Gate building was like revisiting places from your ancient past, Morse thought, as he stood in the lobby, waiting for Thursday. 

It wasn’t painful exactly, but it gave off the floating sense of dissociation one felt when one had firmly confined a period of one’s life to dusty memories. It was like browsing through a photograph album and finding out that the faded pictures were suddenly unfolding to life all around you.

He never browsed through family memories. Constance’s photographs were safely ensconced in the metal box where he kept his few mementos of his mother. He had never opened it again after closing the lid. It was enough to know that they were there, someplace; available should he need them.

But he never would.

Morse surveyed his surroundings as if he had never seen them before. The once so familiar room seemed to have shrunk. Not from the reality of the Police Station, which was huge, more massive than the old Cowley Station had ever been, but from an emptiness coming from within. 

He didn’t belong there anymore.

If he ever had.

In a flash, memories of a dusty basement and the crates he had had to move in order to access his desk, went through Morse’s mind, and he couldn’t refrain an instinctive jerk of the chin. For a second, he looked like an affronted peacock fluffing his feathers.

The policeman at the front desk— _Milman, was it?_ —turned his head at the very same moment and cast a curious glance at Morse. Being met with a volley of anger, he promptly retreated, lowering his eyes under cover of rearranging his various writing implements and forms. 

Thursday—who had only just arrived—mistook Morse’s gesture and pushed his hand deeper into the pocket of his coat, with enough force to almost tear the fabric. 

‘This way,’ he said briskly, as if Morse already were a stranger to the premises.

Morse nodded slightly and followed him, acutely aware of the hush that spread across the desks as they went down the stairs. He looked neither right –where the sergeants were sitting—nor left, and stood stiffly outside Mr. Bright’s office as Thursday’s knuckles rapped on the door.

‘Come in,’ said a voice Morse didn’t quite recognise.

Mr. Bright had shrunk, too.

The blinds of his office were lowered, cutting off any passer-byes’ curiosity. When the door closed, only faint footsteps could be heard outside, their sounds muffled by the carpet. 

The room was very much the same, and Morse felt almost surprised, as if the changes occurring in their lives should have been reflected on the furniture. But no, the same abstract decorations hung on the walls, empty woven squares like overgrown chessboards turned sour; the relegated house plant still sulking in a corner. On the round table used for informal meetings, there were two empty cups of coffee pushed to the side, among various files.

Morse was so focused on Mr. Bright’s crumbled face that he almost missed the man seated at this very table, his back to the door. All he could see was receding hair until the visitor slowly pushed his chair back and stood up. Morse had a better look at a roundish face, made all the more spherical by heavy glasses shielding hazel eyes, and he scowled.

The man wasn’t a stranger after all. It was Morse’s present Governor, Desmond McNutt.

‘Sir,’ Morse said, including both his superiors in his greeting.

‘Ah, Morse,’ Mr. Bright said, ‘Glad to see you. Very glad.’ He smiled a fleeting smile, the corners of his lips stretching as if they had forgotten how to go up.

Thursday tensed and, as if he wanted to reassure him, Morse unclenched the fists he had unwittingly tightened. His palms were sweating. He wiped them unobtrusively on his coat and started again, guiltily this time, under McNutt’s intent gaze.

‘Sir—,’ began Morse.

Again, Thursday intervened, verbally this time. ‘Morse would like to—’

‘Let the man speak, Thursday,’ McNutt butted in, and at his unexpected interposition, Morse’s eyes narrowed.

‘Sir, I wished to—’ He didn’t know what he wanted to say, really, so his words dried up again without any outward intervention.

It was McNutt who saved them all undue embarrassment. ‘Maybe DCI Thursday and DS Morse would like to know of the latest developments we were discussing?’

Morse lowered his head again in a gesture that could pass for brisk acceptance. Thursday mumbled something vague, and they all took a seat round the table. When Morse glanced at the table top, he saw that the file placed in the middle of it was his. But it would be discussed so openly; despite the presence of former and present superiors.

‘Coffee?’ offered Bright.

At everyone’s refusal, he went on with a firmer voice. ‘Inquiries were made about the Talentis, and some of Morse’s findings ascertained. Inquiries are still pending, but the truth of the matter is that Talenti’s financial assets are not what they first appeared.’ 

He glanced up from his fidgeting hands, stilling them with an obvious effort. ‘Talenti’s house in Godstow wasn’t even his. It’s mortgaged to the hilt and belonged to one of _California Amity Redemption and Reimbursement_ ’s… clients.’

Bright’s tone filled with disgust as he elaborated, ‘The lawful owner…perished in an unfortunate accident two years ago. His nephew lives in America, and has been notified that his present tenants weren’t quite who he thought they were.’

Morse asked, feeling more at his ease now that he was discussing a case, ‘Could the Talentis have orchestrated another accident to acquire their “rear base” in England?’ 

‘Possibly. We’re still looking into that.’ He considered Morse with some kindness. ‘If not for you, Morse, we’d never have suspected a thing. The Talentis were highly regarded around Oxford.’

‘My warning came too late,’ Morse said, and in the bitterness of his tone, his elders also heard self-castigation.

‘Too eager by half to get a bird under your skin,’ Thursday murmured in a loud whisper.

Morse’s shoulders went rigid. ‘If not for that, they would still—’ he snapped back. _Would he have to assert this forever to mitigate his guilt?_

‘The Yard’s investigating _California Amity Redemption and Reimbursement_. Most of the assets are held by offshore societies, and F. De Vere hasn’t been traced yet,’ Bright said, ignoring their spat.

‘He may not even exist,’ Morse said bitterly. ‘Talenti isn’t one to rely on anyone.’

‘The proverbial Genius of Crime?’ Thursday scoffed. 

‘A perverted genius. Not a Moriarty, certainly, but someone active enough on the Continent,’ McNutt corrected gently. ‘There are such things as remarkable con men. Talenti certainly succeeded with the University of Oxford.’

‘And with coppers,’ Thursday added, seemingly not eager to be robbed even of an empty victory over Morse.

Without his will, a sharp intake of air flowed through Morse’s tightened teeth. The hiss was lost in a clang as Bright moved the china to thumb more easily through another file hidden under Morse’s personal record.

‘Talenti’s _modus operandi_ followed the same patterns: he chose a policeman whose record was… known to the public and built from that. He targeted the brightest DS, hoping that they would be given cases of interest—of interest to him, obviously!—to investigate. A DS from Leicester—whose name is classified—confessed.’ He searched for Morse’s eyes and held them as he added softly, ‘Mrs. Talenti had no hand in it.’

Morse opened his mouth. ‘If not for my—’ 

‘—sloppiness?’ Thursday ventured.

‘—dedication, rather,’ McNutt corrected.

Morse let them decide of the terminology and left that blank empty. ‘—Talenti would still be in Oxford, I’m aware of that.’

‘Better study the files at your desk, from now on,’ McNutt suggested. In his eyes, Morse read understanding blending with a caveat. He wouldn’t get off so easily, next time.

‘Yes, sir,’ he agreed, and surprised himself with the meekness of his tone.

‘Good lad,’ his new Governor said, reinforcing the impression that Morse was a green DC just out of school.

What was the point of this meeting? To apprise him of the latest development in the investigation—a courtesy extended to him to thank him? Or a way to let him know how close he had been to a disciplinary hearing?

Because it reminded him of someone else, or to change the topic, Morse asked, ‘May I ask about Sergeant Strange?’

‘Cowley General released him two days ago. He won’t see action for a long while, but he’s a definite asset when it comes to reshuffling.’ Bright smiled a cautious smile. ‘He’ll be alright.’

‘That’s good news.’ 

Morse would have to call Strange when all was done here. And maybe pay him a visit, even if it were the last things he wished to do. Eyeing one’s guilt in the eye wasn’t something he ever got used to. If not for him, Strange would never have set a foot in that bloody house.

‘Don’t—don’t beat yourself up about it, Morse,’ Bright told him, in the same gentle tone. ‘That’s part of the job.’

Morse licked his lips, as if the moisture would facilitate his answer. However, it was for nought, as Bright got up. ‘I hate to lose you, but—’ a quick glance in Thursday’s direction told it all ‘—that’s for the best, I’m sure.’

Morse followed suit, as did the other two DCIs.

‘Good-bye, sir,’ he merely said. They shook hands. Bright’s was a little feverish. ‘And… thank you.’

Bright nodded. A curt, almost militaristic nod, but one had only to watch his eyes to know what he felt regarding Morse’s transfer.

Morse exited the Superintendent’s office for probably the last time. He stood in the corridor, uncertain of his next move, hands soon reaching the haven of his pockets.

‘That’s it, then,’ Thursday’s voice said, and he turned around. Thursday opened his mouth, and, for a second, Morse wondered if Thursday would tell him, as he had once advised Fancy, ‘He’s a good man, so watch, listen and learn,’ but he was spared that, at least.

The silence deepened, the sound of typewriters keys hitting sheet of paper fading. There was another heartbeat that squeezed Morse’s ribs like a stroke, and he took his right hand out of the pocket of his coat. Slowly, he extended it, offering it tentatively. ‘Sir. I learned a lot from you.’

Thursday didn’t take it. 

Morse’s hand slowly lowered and hung awkwardly by his side. ‘Not enough, it would seem.’

His weight shifted from one foot to the other and he was about to turn when Thursday’s voice stopped his impetus.

‘I told you before, Morse, handshakes are for goodbyes.’

Such was Morse’s stubbornness that he couldn’t help correcting. ‘It is good-bye, sir. When I went to Woodstock, it already was, but I didn’t see that. Called a few times but you never returned mine.’

‘If you think it necessary…’

Thursday looked pointedly at Morse’s hand, and Morse proffered it again. Thursday’s handclasp was firm and he didn’t linger a second more than he had to.

Morse didn’t try to see McNutt’s expression, but merely followed him as they went out of the Castle Gate CID.

‘ _Exeunt_ ,’ he thought drily.

And this time, it seemed like the final curtain had really fallen on another act in his life.

  


* * *

  


When Morse finally went through the accumulation of letters slipped under his door—bills, prospectus, a New Year card from Joyce—, he found an envelope inscribed in a hand he did not recognise. Yet, the return address, drawn in the same decisive script, bore ‘Miss J. Thursday’ above a street name in Glasgow.

She didn’t make any great fuss over him, just inquired about his health in a very matter-of-fact way, and told him that she already knew the gist of what had occurred—that the suspects were gone, and this polite euphemism drew a bitterest, scornful twist on the corner of Morse’s lips—, and that he was safely back. She didn’t try to tell him he’d done anything brave when he knew—and she knew—that he’d done something stupid and rash, of which he was ashamed. Yet, she told him that her former offer of a coffee was still going, and that it might be made easier by her being posted at Birmingham after her secondment, and him at Kidlington.

Some weeks later, he wrote back. And, this time, the letter was written for her eyes only.

  


* * *

  


Morse hung his car coat on the rack near his desk, then ran his hand in his hair, brushing away the rain from it, hoping that it wouldn’t curl. In the short time it had taken him to exit the Jag and go inside Kidlington Police Station, damp had already pierced the coat and bled through his jacket, so he divested himself of it, too, hanging it on the back of his chair.

Sitting down, he switched on the lamp on his desk. It was the same model as was used in Castle Gate, but instead of a cheery bright yellow, it was dark blue. The muted colour suited the drabness of the room, whose latest additions couldn’t hide the mismatched furniture.

That change of colour scheme and furniture was one of the few from his post from one CID to another. The yellowish light fell on the same kind of cases he had investigated under Thursday’s guidance: missing persons, premeditated murders, crimes of passion. No tigers or spy entanglements, so far. Nothing to warrant McNutt’s gentle chiding of Morse’s ‘literary flourishes’ as he had already qualified them. 

Thursday would probably have used a stronger language to reprove Morse’s flights of fancy or leaps into intuitive waters. But it only underlined the difference between both DCIs. McNutt’s gut feelings were quite different from Thursday’s. It was as if he could look right inside people's minds, their souls, while Thursday’s brand of coppering was more on the brawny side and a method that felt more and more irrelevant to Morse’s way of thinking.

The phone rang—a shivering, jingly sound. Morse could not refrain from a gesture of irritation, as his pencil skidded across the paper. Coming in early, he had hoped for at least half an hour without distraction. 

‘Morse,’ he said into the receiver, his eyes darting back greedily to the file open before him.

‘Morse? It’s Thursday.’

**The End**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ‘ _ **… and thus they creep, / Crouching and crab-like, through th(eir) sapping streets.**_ ’ is a quote from Byron’s _[Ode on Venice](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:The_Works_of_Lord_Byron_\(ed._Coleridge,_Prothero\)_-_Volume_4.djvu/231)_ (1818).  
>   
> The English translation of the **_quote taken from Virgil’s eighth_ Eclogue** comes from Deborah Mary Kerr’s enlightening [PhD Thesis](https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/286365375.pdf).  
>   
> We aren’t told **where Joan was on secondment** , but I decided she was in Glasgow as a tribute to EAU1636’s ‘ _[Whatever a Moon Has Always Meant](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23112358/chapters/55300117)_ ’ that sent Joan in Scotland.  
>   
> I added the **last scene** after AstridContraMundum suggested it: the first ending was much more elliptic… Again, all my gratitude goes to my great Beta: without her, this fic wouldn’t be online.  
>   
>  **Reading your feedback would really make my day!** And if you also wish to comment the ending of _Zenana_ and how it might have gone afterwards, I’d be happy to discuss it too!  
>   
>   
> 


End file.
